How to delete current project and reuse the project name

Question

I'm a self-confessed tfs newbie using VS2010 with team explorer. My application uses version control. I wish to rename my current project ProjectA to something else like ProjectA_01. Then after I've made my architecture changes on a new VS2010 solution I wish to check in the new project as ProjectA. A list of steps would be helpful. Thanks

Answer 1

I'm pretty sure you can't rename a project in TFS. You could create a new project named ProjectA_01 if you wish, but from the sound of what you are trying to accomplish, I think what you want is to work with branches.

Essentially, you put all of your code in a folder under your project. So, on your hard drive it would look something like this:

C:\tfs folder\ProjectA\Main

All of your source code goes in the Main folder. Then in the Source Control Explorer window in Visual Studio, right click on the Main folder and select Branching and Merging -> Convert to Branch. This is your Main branch (or trunk) and you could use it for code that is ready for beta testing or a product release.

Once you created the main branch, you can right click on the branch again and select Branching and Merging -> Branch. At that point, you can name it ProjectA_01 or whatever you wish. Typically this would be your development branch where you do the bulk of your development.

After you make all of your changes in the ProjectA_01 branch and check in all of your code, you can right click on the ProjectA_01 branch once more and select Branching and Merging -> Merge, which will move all of your changes back to the Main branch (which would signify it is ready for user testing or release).

Answer 2

"Hawkke" is correct in that you cannot rename a team project. If you want this feature, you can vote for it here: http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/2037605-rename-project-in-tfs. It is currently the #1 voted feature for TFS at this time.

I'm actually having a hard time understanding if you are talking about renaming a TFS team project or if you are talking about renaming a Visual Studio project. Unfortunately they are named the same.

However, usually team projects are very large and you would have lots of different product families, products, and ultimately Visual Studio solutions & projects in the same team project. You can create subfolders, including maybe even an "Archive" folder in this case, inside of the team project to organize your source code better.

Let us know if we aren't understanding your question though.