Team Foundation Server
This page contains descriptions of the fields and options available when setting up a VCS root to connect to Microsoft Team Foundation Server Version Control.
Common VCS Root properties are described here.
When connecting to an Azure DevOps Git repository, select Git as Type of VCS.
Cross-Platform TFS Integration
TeamCity features the cross-platform TFS integration, which works on Linux, macOS, and Windows platforms. Without installing additional software, TeamCity servers and build agents can interact with Team Foundation Servers 2012 or later, and Azure DevOps Services.
The built-in TFS plugin can work in two modes: the default and cross-platform. The working mode is based on the availability of Team Explorer (default mode): if it is not present, the plugin falls back from the default to cross-platform mode.
When detecting the Team Explorer version, TeamCity checks .NET GAC and the following paths:
Windows x86: %CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Shared\Team Foundation Server\%version_number%Windows x64: %CommonProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Shared\Team Foundation Server\%version_number%
To enforce the cross-platform mode on TeamCity, set the teamcity.tfs.mode=java build configuration parameter.
TFS Settings
Option | Description |
|---|---|
URL | Team Foundation Server URL in the following format:
|
Root | Specify the root using the following format: |
Username | Specify a user to access Team Foundation Server. This can be a username or |
Password | Enter the password of the user entered above |
Learn more about authentication in Azure DevOps.
Agent-Side Checkout
The agent-side checkout is supported on Windows, as well as Linux and Mac agent machines.
TeamCity automatically creates a TFS workspace for each checkout directory used. The workspace is created on behalf of the user account specified in the VCS root settings.
By default, the created TFS workspace uses the location defined in the TFS server settings. You can force TeamCity to use a specific workspace location via the build configuration parameter teamcity.tfs.workspace.location set to local or server.
The created TFS workspaces are automatically removed based on the timeout configured via the teamcity.tfs.workspace.idleTime build agent property set to the default value of 1209600 sec (2 weeks).
Option | Description |
|---|---|
Enforce overwrite all files | When the option is enabled, TeamCity will call TFS to update workspace rewriting all files. |
Normally, there is no need to do a forced update for every build. But, if you suspect that TeamCity is not getting the latest version from the repository, you can use this option.
TFS does not allow several workspaces on a machine mapped to the same directory. If it happens, the TeamCity TFS agent-side checkout will attempt to remove intersecting workspaces to create a new workspace that matches the specified VCS root and checkout rules.
Note that it can fail to remove workspaces created by another user, and in this case you need to remove such workspaces manually.
To differentiate local mappings, it is recommended to use checkout rules in the following format:
$/root1 => /root1$/root2 => /root2
Authentication Notes
The following authentication options are available in Azure DevOps.
Personal Access Tokens
To use access tokens, you need to create a personal access token in your Azure DevOps account, where you have to set some Code access scope in your repositories and use it when configuring a VCS root.
Option | Description |
|---|---|
Username | Leave blank for TFVC, any value for Git, for example, username |
Password | Enter your personal access token created earlier |
Required Access Scope
TFS subsystem | Scopes |
|---|---|
TFVC | All scopes |
Git | Code (read) / Code (read and write) for versioned settings |
Work Items | Work items (read) |
Commit Status | Code (status) |
Alternate Authentication Credentials
To use the login/password pair authentication, you have to enable alternate credentials in your Azure DevOps account, where you can set a secondary username and password to use when configuring a VCS root.
NTLM/Kerberos on Linux and macOS
To use this authentication method, check that your machine includes Kerberos libraries and that the authentication is properly configured. If you encounter any issues, please check the steps described in the Microsoft documentation.
Team Foundation Proxy Configuration
To enable usage of Team Foundation Proxy, define the TFSPROXY environment variable for the user account which runs the TeamCity server or agent and restart them to apply changes.
Example:
HTTP Proxy Server Configuration
Default .NET Working Mode
To interact with the TFS server, the proxy server settings specified for the user account which runs the TeamCity server or agent will be used.
Cross-Platform Working Mode
The default Java proxy server settings specified for the TeamCity agent will be used in the TFS integration. On the TeamCity agent, build agent configuration or Java options can be used. The TeamCity-TFS integration supports the following options: