new user - branching an already-shared file

[tdacon]

I'm a long-time user of Visual SourceSafe, but new to Vault. Branching of already-shared files doesn't seem to work the same way, and so far it doesn't work at all for me. Since I expect that it does work, I must be missing something.

I've shared an entire project (folder) to another folder, and now I want to branch one or more files into the new folder. Going through the branch process after selecting the file in the original folder, I get the following message:

<filename> caused the transaction to fail: An item with the same name or object id already exists in the selected folder.

All I wanted it to do was break the share link and branch the file, as the documentation claims it will do. Instead it seems to want the branched file not to exist in the shared project. Just deleting the file from the disk folder doesn't do any good. And if I delete it from the new (shared) project, it deletes it from both the original and the shared project. I can't see how to get this to work.

What am I missing here?

[jclausius]

Folder sharing is one area of Vault which differs from SourceSafe. In Vault, the Folder is the object which is actually shared ( but in VSS, a new directory structure is created and all files are shared ).

<aside>This is rather powerful, as changes in one of the Shared folders ( add or delete ) is reflected in the actual folder. In VSS, since the folders are not shared, a delete or add would have to take place in all shared instances.</aside>

Anyway, back to our story. Since the main folder is shared, all files within that folder are NOT shared, so they cannot be "share-branched", but rather they would be "copy branched".

To break the share in your case, you should invoke Branch on the shared folder. This will break the share between the two folders creating distinct ( but similarly named ) objects within the repository.

HTH