On codeplex the VSTS Rangers have published the Branching Guidance II (yes, a while ago, but still very true). The basic idea there is the separation between 3 major branches, the Main (or trunk), the Development and the Release branch. One can elaborate on these and use multiple Development branches, and also a tree of release branches, but the basic principle can be summed up with these three. Now, if we look at the different sets of build types we have, see http://geekswithblogs.net/t... ......
I did an article on Subsystem branching (http://geekswithblogs.net/... as a result of a post on the Microsoft forums regarding this. Further, at the PDC 2008 conference now, Grant Holliday made me aware of the TFS Dependency Replicator, which also is a way to solve the problem. It corresponds to the solution I named Solution 3B, however, it's not using the branch/merge facilities, so the TFS itself is not "aware" of the file copied. Anyway, ......