I need to merge a changeset to another branch in TFS. But unfortunately, due to an unwanted code checkin happened in this changeset, I cannot merge the full changeset to the new branch. Therefore I need to skip the unwanted files from the changeset and merge other files to the new branch. Is there are a possibility of doing that? Ps: Since the changeset is huge I cannot merge it manually.
You can do this, what you are going to achieve kind like a partial merge.
A partial merge is recorded when only some changes from a changeset are merged into the target. There are two common scenarios in below which you can end up with partial merges:
Scenario 1:Undo some pending changes when you are checking the merged files
In this case, even though we already merged changeset Dev to Main, it is still a merge candidate. This is caused by the fact that the merge engine detected that there are still some changes in that changeset which were not propagated from Dev to Main.
Scenario 2: Performed the merge at feature level not from the top of the branch
For example: consider that you have two branches Main and Dev, each of them has two folders (Feature1 and Feature2) and each feature folder contains one file. We edit both files from the feature folders (Dev\Feature1\feature1.txt and Dev\Feature2\feature2.txt) and check-in the changes.
If you perform the merge operation at the Feature1 level.（Changset142→
Changeset143） You will notice in the Pending Changes window that only the edit done in the Feature1 folder will be merged. Complete the merge.
If you take a look at the merge history of the Feature1 folder you will see that all changes from changeset 142 have been merged into changeset 143.
However,if you take a look at the merge history of Main you will see that only parts of changeset 142 have been merged into changeset 143. This is normal as changeset 142 has some changes – the edit of the file in the Feature2 folder – which were not delivered.
In case of a partial merge, to figure out what changes have been merged and what changes from the changeset were left out. The only way to achieve this is to diff the contents of the changeset that was partially merged, and the contents of the changeset that was generated as the result of the merge. More detail info you can refer this blog: Partial Merges in TFS – A Guide
So, if your unwanted code only exist single or few files, you could follow scenario 1, undo those files.
If those files sill contain some other need changes, then I would suggest you directly merge all changes and create a new changeset after merge operation to exclude those unwanted code.
This should be the simplest solution.