DOC: Merge Branches Option Doesn't Work at Project Level (142157)

SUMMARY

The Merge Branches option is Dimmed (unavailable) when a project is selected. It is not possible to Merge an entire project from the Visual SourceSafe Explorer. This occurs even though you follow the directions outlined in the Visual SourceSafe Help file in the "Merge Branches" topic and "Merging Files & projects" subtopic, which state that to merge branches:

Click the file or project you want in Visual SourceSafe Explorer. Then on the SourceSafe Menu, click Merge Branches. Visual SourceSafe displays the Merge dialog box.
In the Project box, click the project that has the version of the file from which you want to merge changes.
Click Merge.

MORE INFORMATION

You can merge all of the files in a project using the Visual SourceSafe Command line. Follow these steps:

Switch to the project that you want to merge the files into:
SS CP $/<project Name>
Use the merge command on the project you want to merge files from. Use *.* as the last parameter after the project name as in this example:
SS MERGE $/<Project to merge from>/*.*
The merge command will merge each file in the project specified with the files in the Current Project.

NOTE: SS MERGE will not work recursively. That is, it will not merge files in subprojects of the project specified. You must merge each subproject using the two-step procedure. If a conflict occurs during the merge, Sourcesafe will notify you with the message:

"An automatic merge has occurred and there are conflicts. Edit <file path>\<filename> to resolve them"

You will then need to open the specified file in a text editor for manual resolution. There is no Visual Merge option when merging from the command line.

REFERENCES

For additional information about resolving automatic merge conflicts, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

132971 INFO: Merging SourceSafe Files