Safely delete a TFS branch project

Question

I\'m currently reorganising our TFS source control for a very large set of solutions, and I\'ve done this successfully so far.

I have a problem at the moment where I

Answer 1

Let me put the facts like this:

• Within the context of the TFS source control system, "Delete" is a purely logical operation. You can Undelete at any time. You can have multiple deleted items occupy the same path over time, or even simultaneously. Branch relationships are preserved.
• TFS "Destroy" is physical removal. To maintain database integrity, that means all entity relationships are removed too: changeset history, pending change records, shelved versions, merge history, and yes -- branch hierarchy. This Destroy feature was introduced in TFS 2008.
• Destroy is the only operation allowed to alter the merge history table (from which branch relationships are determined). All other operations are strictly append-only.
• TfsDeleteProject does its best to completely remove all traces of a project, the primary goal being to allow creation of a brand new project with the same name. Some TFS subsystems support physical deletes; some, such as WIT field metadata, only support logical deletes, even in TFS 2008 & beyond. In the case of source control, TfsDeleteProject invokes "delete" in 2005 and "destroy" in 2008+.