Is there a TFS policy to allow only merges and not edits?

Question

We have a baseline folder and development branches in TFS. We'd like to add a policy where changes can only be merged into the baseline from a development branch and not edited directly unless you override the policy. How can we do this?

Answer 1

There is no way to enforce this restriction 100%. Options:

• write a checkin policy [but they can be overridden]
• write an event hook that notifies you [or takes some other action] when someone commits something that wasn't a merge
• restrict checkin permissions on the branch to trusted developers / integration managers [but they themselves would have full rights]

There's an example of a "merge only" checkin policy here: http://leon.mvps.org/TFS/MergeOnlyPolicy.aspx

Answer 2

You might consider limiting the security on those branches to the person(s) who would be responsible enough to do it right.