Examining Get Task in TeamBuild

  • Article

TeamBuild implemented ‘Get’ task for syncing sources. This task is same as ‘tf get’ , the command line utility to sync sources.

Properties Supported by Get Task

Workspace

The workspace used to get sources

Version

You can specify a version by:

  • Date/time (D10/20/2005)
  • Changeset version (C1256)
  • Label (Lmylabel)
  • Latest version (T)
  • Workspace version (Wworkspacename;owner)
  • If no version is provided, Team Build retrieves the latest server version of the specified filespec into your workspace.

by default, it is ‘T’, get latest sources.

FileSpec

items that need to be fetched. It is ‘*’, by default

Recursive

Recursively retrieves all items that match your filespec

Force

Overwrite files

The default build type uses this task to get the latest sources. However, you can very easily customize Get task to sync what you want. To do this, you will need to override the CoreGet target implemented in TeamBuild targets file Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.targets. I typically copy a target that I want to override into TfsBuild.proj of my build type and make changes appropriately. In this case, I copied CoreGet target into my TfsBuild.proj and played with it. I’m providing some examples below. This is a very powerful task. You can use the options Version and FileSpec in conjuction to get any sources

of any version.

 

Getting Labled Sources

The following example gets the sources labeled with “Beta1” and builds.

<Target Name="CoreGet"

Condition=" '$(IsDesktopBuild)'!='true' "

DependsOnTargets="$(CoreGetDependsOn)" >

<Get

Condition=" '$(SkipGet)'!='true' "

Workspace="$(WorkspaceName)"

Recursive="$(RecursiveGet)"

Version="LBeta1"

Force="$(ForceGet)" />

<!-- Label all files in the workspace to identify sources used in this build -->

<Label

Condition=" '$(SkipLabel)'!='true' "

Workspace="$(WorkspaceName)"

Name="$(BuildNumber)"

Version="W$(WorkspaceName)"

Files="$/$(TeamProject)"

Recursive="true" />

</Target>

Getting a Particular Changeset into TeamBuild

The following example gets the sources labeled with “Beta1” and gets Porgram.cs that was checked in with changeset 26.

<Target Name="CoreGet"

Condition=" '$(IsDesktopBuild)'!='true' "

DependsOnTargets="$(CoreGetDependsOn)" >

<Get

Condition=" '$(SkipGet)'!='true' "

Workspace="$(WorkspaceName)"

Recursive="$(RecursiveGet)"

Version="LBeta1"

Force="$(ForceGet)" />

<Get

Condition=" '$(SkipGet)'!='true' "

FileSpec="$/ScoutingTest/HelloWorld/Program.cs"

Workspace="$(WorkspaceName)"

Recursive="$(RecursiveGet)"

Version="C26" />

<!-- Label all files in the workspace to identify sources used in this build -->

<Label

Condition=" '$(SkipLabel)'!='true' "

Workspace="$(WorkspaceName)"

Name="$(BuildNumber)"

Version="W$(WorkspaceName)"

Files="$/$(TeamProject)"

Recursive="true" />

</Target>

Namaste!