How to prevent TFS 2013 from locking binary files?

Question

We work with TFS 2013 with Visual Studio 2013, and using Gated Check-In. With Gated Check-In it's impossible to preserve pending changes locally, if one of the files is locked.

We don't use locks at all, but:

If you check out a file that is of a type that is treated as binary, Visual Studio Team Foundation Server might automatically lock it because binary files cannot be merged. (MSDN)

We want to configure TFS to not lock binary files. How can we do this?

Answer 1

In Visual Studio, use the "Team" menu, then "Team Project Collection Settings", then "Source Control..."

From there you can change which types allow File Merging.

You might also want to see if "Enable multiple check-out" is checked. You can find this in Visual Studio, use the "Team" menu, then "Team Project Settings", then "Source Control..."