VCS Checkout Mode

The VCS Checkout mode is a configuration that sets how project sources reach an agent. Agents do not need any additional software for automatic checkout modes.

TeamCity has three different VCS checkout modes:

Checkout mode	Description
Automatically on server	This is the default setting. The TeamCity server will export the sources and pass them to an agent before each build. Since sources are exported rather than checked out, no administrative data is stored in the file system and version control operations (like check in or label or update) can not be preformed from the agent. TeamCity optimizes communications with the VCS servers by caching the sources and retrieving from the VCS server only the necessary changes. (Clean Checkout on that)
Automatically on agent	The build agent will check out the sources before the build. This checkout mode is supported only for CVS, Subversion, and TFS. Agent-side checkout frees more server resources and provides the ability to access version control-specific directories (.svn, CVS) i.e. the build script can perform VCS operations (like check-ins into the version control) - in this case please ensure the build script uses necessary credentials for the check-in. Please note that machine-specific settings (like configuring SSL communications, etc.) should be configured on each machine using agent-side checkout. Please note that "exclude" VCS Checkout Rules cannot improve agent checkout performance because it checks out the entire top-level directory included into a build, then deletes the files that were excluded.
Do not check out files automatically	TeamCity will not check out any sources. The build script will contain the commands to check out the sources. Please note that TeamCity will accurately report changes only if the checkout is performed on the revision specified by the Predefined Properties properties passed into the build.

Last modified: 20 April 2023