TeamCity On-Premises
 
2023.11
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  1. Managing Projects
  2. Configuring VCS Settings
  3. Configuring VCS Roots
  4. Git

Git

Edit page Last modified: 29 November 2023

TeamCity supports Git out of the box. Git source control with Azure DevOps Services is supported (see authentication notes below).

This page contains description of the Git-specific fields of the VCS root settings.
For common VCS root properties, see this section.

note

The Git command-line client needs to be installed on the agents if the agent-side checkout is used.

warning

Git versions earlier than 2.10.0 will be deprecated in the future versions of TeamCity. If you get the related warning on running a build on some agent, we suggest that you update Git (the one specified in the TEAMCITY_GIT_VERSION parameter) and restart the agent.

Important notes:

Native Git for VCS-related operations on the server

TeamCity can now use native Git as the default option for Git operations on the server. Switching to native Git improves the performance of the checking for changes operations on the server in comparison with the previously used JGit implementation. It also fixes a number of issues related to large Git repositories.

Before switching, make sure a native Git client version 2.29 or later is installed on your server machine, and the path to its executable is specified in the PATH environment variable. Alternatively, you can set the full path to the executable via the teamcity.server.git.executable.path internal property (no server restart is required). On Windows, remember to use double backslashes in the path.

To switch your TeamCity server to native Git, go to Administration | Diagnostics and open the Git tab. Here you can test the connection via native Git in any VCS root on your server. If you choose to test all VCS roots, TeamCity will check whether they successfully connect via JGit and then test their connection via native Git. This measure helps ensure that none of your pipelines will break after switching to native Git. If the connection test is successful, you can enable the native Git support on your server(s).

warning

See known issues of the current native Git implementation in TeamCity.

General Settings

Option

Description

Fetch URL

The URL of the remote Git repository used for fetching data from the repository.

Push URL

The URL of the target remote Git repository used for pushing annotated tags created via VCS labeling build feature to the remote repository. If blank, the fetch URL is used.

Default branch

Configures default branch. Parameter references are supported here. Default value is refs/heads/master.

note

You can configure Git-plugin to fetch all heads by adding the teamcity.git.fetchAllHeads=true custom parameter.

Branch specification

Lists the patterns for branch names, required for feature branches support. The matched branches are monitored for changes in addition to the default branch. The syntax is similar to checkout rules: +|-:branch_name, where branch_name is specific to the VCS, i.e. refs/heads/ in Git (with the optional * placeholder).

tip

Here, the pipe symbol | represents the OR command, as in regular expressions: use + for including, OR - for excluding.

Use tags as branches

Allows monitoring / checking out git tags as branches making branch specification match tag names as well as branches (for example,+|-:refs/tags/<tag_name>). By default, tags are ignored.

Username style

Defines a way TeamCity reports username for a VCS change. Changing the username style will affect only newly collected changes. Old changes will continue to be stored with the style that was active at the time of collecting changes.

Submodules

Select whether you want to ignore the submodules, or treat them as a part of the source tree. Submodule repositories should either not require authentication or use the same protocol and accept the same authentication as configured in the VCS root.

Username for tags/merge

A custom username used for labeling.

Branch Matching Rules

  • If the branch matches a line without patterns, the line is used.

  • If the branch matches several lines with patterns, the best matching line is used.

  • If there are several lines with equal matching, the one below takes precedence.
    Everything that is matched by the wildcard will be shown as a branch name in the TeamCity interface. For example, +:refs/heads/* will match refs/heads/feature1 branch, but in the TeamCity interface you'll see only feature1 as a branch name.
    The short name of the branch is determined as follows:

  • if the line contains no brackets, then full line is used, if there are no patterns or part of line starting with the first pattern-matched character to the last pattern-matched character.

  • if the line contains brackets, then part of the line within brackets is used. When branches are specified here, and if your build configuration has a VCS trigger and a change is found in some branch, TeamCity will trigger a build in this branch.

Supported Git Protocols

The following protocols are supported for Git repository URL:

  • ssh: (for example, ssh://git.somwhere.org/repos/test.git, ssh://git@git.somwhereElse.org/repos/test.git, SCP-like syntax: git@git.somwhere.org:repos/test.git)

note

The SCP-like syntax requires a colon after the hostname, while a usual SSH URL does not. This is a common source of errors.

note

When you run TeamCity as a Windows service, it cannot access mapped network drives and repositories located on them.

Authentication Settings

Authentication Method

Description

Anonymous

Select this option to clone a repository with anonymous read access.

Password / personal access token

Specify a valid username (if there is no username in the clone URL; the username specified here overrides the username from the URL) and a password to be used to clone the repository.
For the agent-side checkout, it is supported only if Git 1.7.3+ client is installed on the agent. See TW-18711.
For Git hosted from Team Foundation Server 2013, specify NTLM credentials here.

You can use a personal access token instead of a password to authenticate in GitHub, Azure DevOps Services, GitLab, JetBrains Space, and Bitbucket. When connecting to Azure DevOps, remember to set the Code access scope to Code (read) / Code (read and write) for versioned settings in the repositories you are about to access from TeamCity.

warning

Beginning August 13, 2021, GitHub will no longer accept passwords when authenticating Git operations on GitHub.com.
We highly recommend that you use an access token or SSH key instead of password when configuring a VCS root for a GitHub.com repository.

When using an existing Bitbucket Cloud, Bitbucket Server, GitLab or Azure DevOps Services connection to create a VCS Root, TeamCity will use a refreshable token instead of the password.

Refreshable token

If a VCS root that fetches data from a GitHub, GitHub App, Bitbucket Server, Bitbucket Cloud, Azure DevOps, GitLab, or JetBrains Space was configured using a TeamCity connection, refreshable tokens are enabled by default. Such tokens are short-lived providing more security than passwords or personal access tokens: the TeamCity server refreshes them automatically without sharing any related data with agents.

The Token field displays information about the user who obtained the token and the connection that provided the token.

You can specify a username here if there is no username in the clone URL (the username specified here overrides the username from the URL).

For Azure DevOps, GitHub App, Bitbucket Server, Bitbucket Cloud, JetBrains Space and GitLab connections you can click the Acquire new button to instantly reissue the token used by the VCS root with a token issued for the current user.

Reissue Token

Private Key

Valid only for SSH protocol. A private key must be in the OpenSSH format.

note

Recent versions of OpenSSH no longer generate keys in PEM format by default. The new OpenSSH format is not yet supported by TeamCity (see TW-53615). Use the following command to generate TeamCity-compatible keys: ssh-keygen -t rsa -m PEM.

Select one of the options from the Private Key list and specify a valid username (if there is no username in the clone URL; the username specified here overrides the username from the URL).
Available Private Key options:

  • Uploaded Key — select this option to utilize the key(s) uploaded to the project.

  • Default Private Key — select this option to utilize the keys available on the file system in the default locations used by common ssh tools: the mapping specified in <USER_HOME>/.ssh/config if the file exists or the private key file <USER_HOME>/.ssh/id_rsa (the files are required to be present on the server and also on the agent if the agent-side checkout is used).

  • Custom Private Key — supported only for server-side checkout. Fill the Private Key Path field with an absolute path to the private key file on the server machine. If the key is encrypted, specify the passphrase in the corresponding field.

For all available options to connect to GitHub, see the comment.

Authenticating to Azure DevOps Services

If you use Git source control with Azure DevOps Services, you can use both Azure DevOps OAuth and Azure DevOps PAT connections.

Server Settings

These are the settings used in case of the server-side checkout.

Option

Description

Convert line-endings to CRLF

Convert line-endings of all text files to CRLF (works as setting core.autocrlf=true in a repository config). When not selected, no line-endings conversion is performed (works as setting core.autocrlf=false). Affects the server-side checkout only. A change to this property causes a clean checkout.

Agent Settings

These are the settings used in case of the agent-side checkout.
Note that the agent-side checkout has limited support for SSH. The only supported authentication methods are "Default Private Key" and "Uploaded Private Key".
If you plan to use the agent-side checkout, you need to have Git 1.6.4+ installed on the agents.

Option

Description

Path to Git

Provide the path to a Git executable to be used on the agent. When set to %env.TEAMCITY_GIT_PATH%, the automatically detected Git will be used, see Git executable on the agent for details.

Checkout policy

This setting defines how TeamCity performs a checkout to a build agent.

  • Use mirrors: recommended for long-lived agents. With this option selected, TeamCity creates a remote repository cache on the agent machine under the system/caches/git directory. The cache is then added as alternates when updating the build checkout directory. To speed up the following checkouts of this repository, the agent will reuse the cache in all the builds with the same fetch URL. This also speeds up clean checkout (as only the build working directory is cleaned) and saves disk space (as the mirror is the only clone of the given repository on the agent).

  • Do not use mirrors: choose to check out right into the build checkout directory, without creating a mirror. Less optimal in terms of disk usage than mirrors, but preserved for backwards compatibility with existing configurations.

  • Shallow clone: recommended for short-lived agents; for example, for disposable cloud agents being terminated after every build. Creates a shallow clone by fetching only one required revision, which allows saving time on the build start. Choose this option only if you do not require a Git commit history in your builds and if your cloud image does not contain a fresh Git mirror. You can enforce this option on certain agents by specifying the teamcity.git.shallowClone=true agent configuration property.

  • Auto: TeamCity will automatically apply one of the above approaches depending on the teamcity.cloud.agent.terminate.after.build agent configuration property and on the mirror presence on the agent.

tip

Read how to add a Git mirror on a cloud agent.

Clean Policy/Clean Files Policy

Specify here when the git clean command is to run on the agent, and which files are to be removed.

If a build configuration depends on multiple VCS roots, we suggest that you configure separate agent checkout directories for each of these roots, using VCS checkout rules. This way, git clean will never delete these checkout directories during cleaning.

tip

To configure a connection from a TeamCity server running behind a proxy to a remote Git repository, see this section.

Git executable on the agent

TeamCity needs Git command line client version 1.6.4+ on the agent in order to use the agent-side checkout.

The recommended approach is to ensure that the git client is available in PATH of the TeamCity agent and leave the "Path to git" setting in the VCS root blank.
If you only have the git command line on some machines, set "Path to git" setting in the VCS root to the %env.TEAMCITY_GIT_PATH% value.

Instead of adding Git to the agent's PATH, you can set the TEAMCITY_GIT_PATH environment variable (or env.TEAMCITY_GIT_PATH property in the agent's buildAgent.properties file) to the full path to the git executable.

If TEAMCITY_GIT_PATH is not defined, the Git agent plugin tries to detect the installed git on the launch of the agent. It first tries to run git from the following locations:

  • for Windows — it tries to run git.exe at:

    • C:\Program Files\Git\bin

    • C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin

    • C:\cygwin\bin

  • for *nix — it tries to run git at:

    • /usr/local/bin

    • /usr/bin

    • /opt/local/bin

    • /opt/bin

If Git is not found in any of these locations, it tries to run the git accessible via the PATH environment variable.
If a compatible git (1.6.4+) is found, it is reported in the TEAMCITY_GIT_PATH environment variable. This variable can be used in the Path to git field in the VCS root settings. As a result, the configuration with such a VCS root will run only on the agents where Git was detected or specified in the agent properties.

Git mirrors on cloud agents

By default, TeamCity creates a mirror, that is a copy, of your Git repository under the agent's system/git directory. To save time and disk space on fetching source files, TeamCity points to this mirror via the Git alternate mechanism when updating the checkout directory for a build.

Comparing to self-hosted TeamCity agents, cloud agents require extra steps to add a Git mirror:

  1. When preparing a cloud image, clone the repository under the agent image's system/git directory. If necessary, you can store multiple *.git directories side by side.

  2. Create a map file under the system/git directory and describe the mapping between the original repository and its mirror. For example,

    ssh://git@<host>/<git_folder>.git = <git_folder>.git

When starting a build, a cloud agent will check the mirrors specified in the map file and fetch the difference between the required origin and its mirror. The origin URL in the map file must match the URL set in the VCS root.
This way, builds will run significantly faster, with no need to check out the whole remote repository every time the new cloud agent starts.

tip

Over time, the Git remote origin accumulates many new commits comparing to its mirror in the agent image. If the checkout becomes noticeably slower, try updating the local mirror with the recent commits. It is also worth updating when the agent image is rebuilt due to OS or other upgrades.
Alternatively, you can store the system/git directory in a persistent volume, so it keeps all the updates even when a cloud agent is destroyed, and configure its automatic mounting on each newly created agent.

Configuring Git Garbage Collection on Server

TeamCity server maintains a local clone for every Git repository used in the VCS roots configured on the server. Since the server performs fetch in those clones many times a day, the clone needs regular optimization to maintain predictable performance. If the Git garbage collection for the clone was not run for a long time, the process of collecting changes may slow down or start to report memory-related errors.
TeamCity can automatically run git gc periodically when the native Git client can be found on the server. Inability to run Git GC results in a related health report.

To fix the warning / meet automatic git gc requirements, perform the following:

  1. Install a native Git client manually on the TeamCity server.

  2. Specify the path to the Git executable:

    • Add the directory with the executable to the PATH environment variable and restart the server, or

    • Set the full path to the executable in the teamcity.server.git.executable.path internal property without the server restart. On Windows, remember to use double backslashes in the path.

When TeamCity runs Git garbage collection, the details are logged into the teamcity-cleanup.log. If git garbage collection fails, a corresponding warning is displayed.

TeamCity executes Git garbage collection until the total time doesn't exceed 5 hours quota; the quota can be changed using the teamcity.server.git.gc.quota.minutes internal property.
Git garbage collection is executed every night at 2 AM. This can be changed by specifying the internal property with a cron expression like this: teamcity.git.cleanupCron=0 0 2 * * ?. If the git gc process works slowly and cannot be completed in the allotted time, check the git-repack configuration in the default Git configuration files (for example, you can increase --window-memory to improve the git gc performance).

If the local Git clones need some kind of manual maintenance, you can find them under the <TeamCity Data Directory>/system/caches/git directory. The map file in the directory contains mapping between the repository URL and the subdirectory storing the bare clone of the repository.

Git LFS

TeamCity supports Git LFS for agent-side checkout. To use it, install git 1.8.+ and Git LFS on the build agent machine. Git LFS should be enabled using the git lfs install command (on Windows, an elevated command prompt may be needed). More information is available in the Git LFS documentation.

For LFS, you need to use the same credentials as used for the Git VCS root itself.

We recommend using Git LFS version 2.12.1 or later as earlier versions come with a vulnerability exploit.

Internal Properties

For Git VCS, it is possible to configure the following internal properties:

Property

Default

Description

teamcity.git.idle.timeout.seconds

1800

The idle timeout for communication with the remote repository. If no data were sent or received during this timeout, the plugin throws a timeout error to prevent hanging of the process forever.

tip

The idle timeout can also be set on the agent side.

teamcity.git.fetch.timeout

1800

(deprecated) Override of teamcity.git.idle.timeout.seconds for the git fetch operation

teamcity.git.fetch.separate.process

true

Defines whether TeamCity runs git fetch in a separate process

teamcity.git.fetch.process.max.memory

note

Starting from TeamCity 2019.2, it is recommended to disable this property.
By default, TeamCity starts nested Java processes for git fetch and git patch and automatically selects -Xmx for these processes.

This property provides the explicit -Xmx and disables the automatic -Xmx setup.

Ensure the server machine has enough memory as the memory configured will be used in addition to the main server process and there can be several child processes doing git fetch and git patch, each using the configured amount of the memory. For large repositories requiring heap memory greater than -Xmx1024m for Git fetch, switching to 64-bit Java may be needed.

teamcity.git.fetch.process.max.memory.limit

By default, TeamCity starts nested Java processes for git fetch and git patch and automatically selects -Xmx for these processes.

This property specifies the maximum possible -Xmx value for git fetch or git patch that TeamCity can set automatically.

teamcity.git.monitoring.expiration.timeout.hours

24

teamcity.server.git.gc.enabled

false

Whether TeamCity should run git gc during the server clean-up (native git is used)

teamcity.server.git.executable.path

git

The path to the native git executable on the server. On Windows, remember to use double backslashes in the path.

teamcity.server.git.gc.quota.minutes

60

Maximum amount of time to run git gc

teamcity.git.cleanupCron

0 0 2 * * ? *

Cron expression for the time of a clean-up in git-plugin, by default — daily at 2AM.

teamcity.git.stream.file.threshold.mb

128

Threshold in megabytes after which JGit uses streams to inflate objects. Increase it if you have large binary files in the repository and see symptoms described in TW-14947

teamcity.git.buildPatchInSeparateProcess

true

Git-plugin builds patches in a separate process, set it to false to build patch in the server process. To build patch, git-plugin has to read repository files into memory. To not run out of memory git-plugin reads only objects of size smaller than the threshold, for larger objects streams are used and they can be slow (TW-14947). With patch building in a separate process all objects are read into memory. Patch process uses the memory settings of the separate fetch process.

teamcity.git.mirror.expiration.timeout.days

7

The number of days after which an unused clone of the repository will be removed from the server machine. The repository is considered unused if there were no TeamCity operations on this repository, like checking for changes or getting the current version. These operations are quite frequent, so 7 days is a reasonably high value.

teamcity.git.commit.debug.info

false

Defines whether to log additional debug info on each found commit.

teamcity.git.repackIdleTimeoutSeconds

1800

Defines the idle timeout of git-repack operations, in seconds. You might need to increase this timeout for large repositories as repacking objects in them takes a lot of time.

teamcity.git.sshProxyType

Type of SSH proxy, supported values: http, socks4, socks5. Keep in mind that socks4 proxy cannot resolve remote host names, so if you get an UnknownHostException, either switch to socks5 or add an entry for your git server into the hosts file on the TeamCity server machine.

teamcity.git.sshProxyHost

SSH proxy host

teamcity.git.sshProxyPort

SSH proxy port

teamcity.git.connectionRetryAttempts

3

Number of attempts to establish connection to the remote host for testing connection and getting a current repository state before admitting a failure

teamcity.git.connectionRetryIntervalSeconds

4

Interval in seconds between connection attempts

Build parameters for Git:

Property

Default

Description

teamcity.git.use.native.ssh

false

When checkout on agent: whether TeamCity should use native SSH implementation.

teamcity.git.idle.timeout.seconds

3600

The idle timeout for the git fetch operation when the agent-side checkout is used. The fetch is terminated if there is no output from the fetch process during this time.

Agent-side checkout rules limitations

The Git plugin uses git sparse-checkout to check out Git files on an agent. The plugin is able to perform only simple file mapping operations which limits the set of supported VCS checkout rules for Git.

The following rules are supported:

+:dirA/dirA1
-:dirA/dirA1/dirA2

+:. => dirA/dirA1/dirA2

+:dirA => dirA

+:dirA/dirA1 => dirA/dirA1

+:dirA/dirB/dirC => dirD/dirE/dirA/dirB/dirC

Note that rules must not remap files. That is, the following rule is not supported: +:dirA/dirA1 => dirA/dirA2.

If you specify multiple checkout rules for one root, make sure their checkout directories (the right part of the rule) have a common parent directory ([prefix/]). Only the rules +:dirA => [prefix/]dirA are supported for agent-side checkout, and the [prefix/] must be the same for all rules.

For example:

+:dirA/dirB/dirC => [prefix/]dirA/dirB/dirC
+:dirD/dirE/dirF => [prefix/]dirD/dirE/dirF

Note that the following rule is not supported: +:dirA=>[prefix/]dirA/postfix. If you append [/postfix] to the checkout directory path and the configuration's VCS checkout mode is set to "Always checkout files on agent", new builds will be unable to start.

Checkout directory path error

Known Issues

  • java.lang.OutOfMemoryError while fetching from a repository in case teamcity.git.fetch.process.max.memory property is specified. Since TeamCity 2019.2, the recommended approach is to disable this property thus delegating the automatic memory management to TeamCity.

  • TeamCity running as a Windows service cannot access a network mapped drives, so you cannot work with git repositories located on such drives. To make this work, run TeamCity using teamcity-server.bat.

  • Inflation using streams in JGit prevents OutOfMemoryError, but might get time-consuming (see the TW-14947 issue related to the problem). If you notice a similar behavior, try to increase teamcity.git.stream.file.threshold.mb. Additionally, it is recommended to increase the overall amount of memory dedicated for TeamCity to prevent OutOfMemoryError.

See also

Administrator's Guide