How can I organize my TFS structure such that a one-off project that pulls files from another project can be easily managed?

Question

I have my main project set up very simply in TFS. I've recently begun making a few of my project components generic enough that I can sell them to other organizations using the software for which I made my custom components.

I want to pull these components out into their own branch so I can make minor tweaks and so that I can easily just zip up the relevant files and send them to people who purchase them, but I don't want to have all the surrounding files in that branch.

My project is at $/Project/Main/. The files I need to merge into their own branch are spread out.

$/Project/Main/web/less/modules/myCustomModule.less
$/Project/Main/web/css/myCustomModule.css
$/Project/Main/web/scripts/myCustomModule.js
$/Project/Main/web/UserControls/custom/myCustomModule.ascx
$/Project/Main/web/UserControls/custom/myCustomModule.ascx.cs

I need to copy the directory structure after .../web/ into $/Project/NinjaModules/ but I only want those five files.

tf merge $/Project/Main/web/less/modules/myCustomModule.less $/Project/NinjaModules/less/modules/myCustomModule.less
...

This works fine until I want to merge my changes from $/Project/Main to $/Project/NinjaModules, since I then have to re-run all my commands individually.

Is there a correct way to structure this?

Note: I could tf merge all the directories under $/Project/Main and then tf delete all the files I don't want, but that seems like a rather heavy method to handle it, and any time I add a new file to $/Project/Main and then do my merge, I'd have to delete the new files in $/Project/NinjaModules.

Answer 1

This is much Easier in Git than TFVC but you can and should do everything in one team project. Use area path and folders for each of your components and create Nuger packages for each. You can then consume and auto update those components across your implementation:

http://nkdagility.com/one-team-project/