TeamCity On-Premises 2020.2 Help

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 internal property or build configuration parameter.

TFS Settings

Option

Description

URL

Team Foundation Server URL in the following format:

  • TFS 2010+: http[s]://<host>:<port>/tfs/<collection>

  • TFS 2005/2008: http[s]://<host>:<port>

  • Azure DevOps: https://dev.azure.com/<organization>

  • VSTS: https://<accountname>.visualstudio.com

Root

Specify the root using the following format: $<project name><project_catalog>

Username

Specify a user to access Team Foundation Server. This can be a username or DOMAIN\UserName string.
Use blank to let TFS select a user account that is used to run the TeamCity Server (or Agent for the agent-side checkout).

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:

TFSPROXY=https://tfs-proxy:8081

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 server or agent will be used in the TFS integration. On the TeamCity server, internal properties or Java options can be used. On the TeamCity agent, build agent configuration or Java options can be used. The TeamCity-TFS integration supports the following options:

http.proxyHost http.proxyPort http.nonProxyHosts https.proxyHost https.proxyPort http.proxyUser http.proxyPassword
Last modified: 01 March 2021