title: Best practice for merging solution files with project id conflicts
body: <p>Let's say a TFS branch was created out of some main branch which had 2 projects (FirstNewProject) but while the work was still ongoing in that branch, another branch was created (SecondNewProject) the task was finished and that other branch was merged back down.</p>
  
  <p>If we now try to merge that first branch back into the main branch from which both of these branches were branched we now have a conflict in the solution file which can apparently only be manually resolved...</p>
  
  <p>The first conflict is with <code>SccNumberOfProjects = 3</code> TFS variable which is the same in both FirstNewProject and SecondNewProject solution files but needs to be changed to <code>SccNumberOfProjects = 4</code> because when SecondNewProject was merged back down the number of projects was 3 but now that we're merging the FirstNewProject the number of projects is now 4.</p>
  
  <p>Would changing this variable manually to 4 create an invalid solution file?</p>
  
  <p>The second conflict is within Global section and it has to do with project numbering.</p>
  
  <p>SecondNewProject added these lines to solution file:</p>
  
  <pre><code>SccProjectUniqueName3 = SecondNewProject\\SecondNewProject.csproj
  SccProjectName3 = SecondNewProject
  SccLocalPath3 = SecondNewProject
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>FirstNewProject added these lines to solution file:</p>
  
  <pre><code>SccProjectUniqueName3 = FirstNewProject\\FirstNewProject.csproj
  SccProjectName3 = FirstNewProject 
  SccLocalPath3 = FirstNewProject 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But FirstNewProject is now 4th project so should we change these entries to </p>
  
  <pre><code>SccProjectUniqueName4 = FirstNewProject\\FirstNewProject.csproj
  SccProjectName4 = FirstNewProject 
  SccLocalPath4 = FirstNewProject 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>manually and will that make the solution file invalid and is there anything else to be done when merging back down in a situation like this one?</p>