title: Entity Framework Merge Nightmare
body: <p>We've adopted the Entity Framework and we're finding that when multiple people make isolated changes in their individual source control branches, there are massive conflicts when they come together in a merge, resulting in broken model files.</p>
  
  <p>We're leaning in the direction of forcing exclusive check outs on the file, but I'd like to avoid that.</p>
  
  <p>My question is...</p>
  
  <p>Is there a better compare tool that would handle this better, or is there another approach we could take?</p>
  
  <p>Looking for something that is proven if possible.</p>
  
  <p><strong>NEW UPDATE:</strong>
  For those of you that come across this question, it is based on old EF. I suggest moving to using DbContext over EDMX.  There is a lot of info here on SO about it.  The simplicity of Database first or Code first far outweighs the loss of the designer in my opinion. </p>
  
  <p><strong>UPDATE:</strong>
  We resolved this issue by forcing exclusive changes to the file.  By adding this process we completely eliminated any issues.  While this was not the ideal solution, it was the most reliable and easiest to implement.</p>