VCS Checkout Rules
VCS checkout rules allow you to check out a part of the configured VCS root and to map directories from the version control to subdirectories in the build checkout directory on a build agent. Thus, you can define a VCS root for the entire repository and instruct each build configuration check out only the relevant part of it.
The checkout rules affect what build changes are displayed in the UI and what files are checked out for a build on the agent. If a commit does not match any of the checkout rule patterns of the build's VCS root, TeamCity will completely ignore it. Such change will not be displayed as pending and will not be able to trigger any builds in the current configuration.
To display changes but not to trigger a build on a commit, use VCS trigger rules.
The general recommendation is to keep a number of VCS roots, pointing to the root of the repository, as small as possible and define what is checked out by a specific build configuration via checkout rules.
To add a checkout rule, go to the build configuration's Version Control Settings page, locate the VCS root in the list, and click Edit checkout rules to open a form for entering the rules. Use the VCS repository browser 
to select a directory to check out.
Note that Perforce support in TeamCity treats checkout rules as case-sensitive. Case-insensitivity for Perforce-based build configurations can be enabled on the Version Control Settings page by adding the following comment in the Edit Checkout Rules form: ##teamcity ignore-case.
Syntax
In the examples below the paths in the repository (VCSPath) are relative to the configured VCS root, the paths on the agent (AgentPath) are relative to the build checkout directory.
The general syntax of a single checkout rule is as follows:
If no rule is specified, all files are included.
When you start entering a rule, note that as soon as you enter any +: rule, TeamCity will remove the default "include all" setting.
To include all the files explicitly, use the +:. rule.
Note that exclude checkout rules (in the form of -:) will generally only speed up server-side checkouts, unless you use Perforce and TFS agent-side checkout, where exclude rules are processed effectively.
With other version control systems, agent-side checkouts may emulate the exclude checkout rules by checking out all the root directories mentioned as include rules and deleting the excluded directories. With such systems, exclude checkout rules should generally be avoided for the agent-side checkout. Refer to the VCS Checkout Mode page for more information.
With Git agent-side checkout, TeamCity translates some checkout rules to the sparse checkout patterns. See the details in Git.
If there are multiple VCS roots with intersecting checkout rules (for example, two VCS roots have the checkout rule +: foo => bar) attached to a build configuration and the files are checked out on the agent, some files might be skipped during the checkout. The following warning will be shown in the UI:
The paths specified in the checkout rules of one VCS root conflict (intersect) with checkout rules of another VCS root. This may cause problems in "checkout on agent" mode.To workaround this issue, resolve the conflicts between the checkout rules or change the checkout mode to "server-side ".
When entering rules, note the following:
To enter multiple rules, each rule should be entered on a separate line.
For each file, the most specific rule will apply if the file is included, regardless of what order the rules are listed in.
If you don't enter an operator, it will default to
+:.
Rules can be used to perform the following operations:
Syntax | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Checks out the root into the |
| Excludes |
| Maps the |
| Maps the |
| Maps the |
An example with three VCS checkout rules:
In the above example, the first rule excludes the src/help directory and its contents from the checkout. The third rule is more specific than the second rule and maps the src/samples path to the samples path in the build agent's default work directory. The second rule maps the contents of the src path to the production/sources on the build agent, except src/help which was excluded by the first rule and src/samples which was mapped to a different location by the third rule.