Are TFS shelves a Diff related to a repository version or are they the entire files that were shelved?

Question

Do TFS shelves have the entire files that were changed or do shelves have just the difference compared to a specific version of the repositotory? If it's the first than it can be applied in any version at any time. If it's the second, it can only be applied to a specific version of the repo.

Answer 1

I'm not sure what your question is exactly, since their internal representation should be an implementation detail. But they're full files, stored as a change against the version they were modified from.

Beginning in TFS 2012, one can perform a 3-way merge on unshelve, using the shelved change's unmodified version as the common ancestor.