Label command (Team Foundation Version Control)
Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server 2022 - Azure DevOps Server 2019
Visual Studio 2019 | Visual Studio 2022
The Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) tf label command attaches a label to or removes a label from a version of a file or folder in the TFVC server.
Prerequisites
To use the label command, you must have the Label permission set to Allow. To modify or delete labels created by other users, you must have the Administer labels permission set to Allow. For more information, see Default TFVC permissions.
Syntax
tf label labelname[@scope] [/owner:ownername]
itemspec [/version:versionspec] [/comment:("comment"|@commentfile)]
[/child:(replace|merge)] [/recursive] [/login:username,[password]] [/collection:TeamProjectCollectionUrl]
tf label /delete labelname[@scope]
itemspec [/login:username,[password]] [/collection:TeamProjectCollectionUrl]
Parameters
Arguments
Argument
Description
<labelname>
Identifies the name of the label to attach, modify, or remove from the specified items.
@<scope>
Specifies a TFVC server directory within which the labelname is unique. This parameter lets you independently create, manage, retrieve, and delete one label or set of labeled items when two labels of the same name are in different parts of the TFVC server.
<ownername>
Provides a value such as DOMAIN\JuanGo or just juango to the /owner option.
<itemspec>
Identifies the file or folder from which to label, re-label, or modify. For more information about how TFVC parses the itemspec to determine which items are within scope, see Use Team Foundation version control commands.
Note
You can specify more than one itemspec argument.
<versionspec>
Provides a value such as c2 for the /version option. For more information about how TFVC parses a version specification to determine which items are within its scope, see Use Team Foundation version control commands.
<comment>
A user-provided comment about the label.
@<commentfile>
The user-provided path of a file on disk that contains the comment to use for the label.
<username>
Provides a value to the /login option. You can specify a username value as either DOMAIN\username or username.
<TeamProjectCollectionUrl>
The URL of the specified project collection that contains a version of a file or folder to which you want to attach a label or from which you want to delete a label, for example http://myserver:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection.
Options
Option
Description
/owner
Specifies the name of the user who owns the label.
/version
Optional. Specifies the version of the file or folder to which the label should be attached, modified, or from which the label should be removed. These are changeset values, for example, C93. By default, TFVC uses the base workspace version if no versionspec is provided.
/comment
Adds or modifies a description or comment for the label.
/child
Not documented.
/recursive
Labels all items in the directory that match your itemspec and versionspec. Can't be used with the /delete option.
/delete
Removes the label.
/login
Specifies the user name and password to authenticate the user with Azure DevOps.
/collection
Specifies the project collection.
Remarks
A label is a marker that you can attach to a set of otherwise unrelated files and folders in the TFVC server. Use the label to simplify file and folder retrieval to a workspace for either development or build purposes. A label is like a changeset or date/time to which and from which you can arbitrarily add and remove files and folders or change the versions of the items therein. A label is a version specification that can be passed to the following TFVC commands:
- Branch command
- Difference command
- Dir command
- Get command
- History command
- Merge command
- View command
Common types of labels are milestone labels such as M1, Beta2, or Release Candidate 0.
Labels are version-specific. That is, you can only attach a label to one version of a file or folder. Each version of an item can support multiple labels.
A label isn't a versioned object. Therefore, the label history of files isn't tracked. Also, a label operation doesn't create a pending change in your workspace. When you issue the label command, the update is immediately reflected in the TFVC server.
For more information on how to use the tf command-line utility, see Use Team Foundation version control commands.
Remove and delete labels
You can use the Unlabel command to remove a label from a file or folder. Alternatively, you can delete a label from the system by using the tf label /delete command.
For information about an existing label that includes a list of the items to which the label has been attached, its comment, scope, and owner, see Labels command.
Manage overloaded labels
Label names must be unique throughout a specified scope. When you add a label, you reserve the use of that label name at or under the specified or implied scope. The default value for the @scope parameter is the project, for example, $/TeamProject1.
If another team or user adds a common label such as M3 to a set of version-controlled files in a different part of the TFVC server, you can apply the M3 label to version-controlled files in your project as long as the root project folders are in different directories. For example, if files in the $/math directory are labeled M3, you can also apply the M3 label to files in your $/projects directory.
To get, remove a label, or otherwise manage your M3-labeled items, you should specify the @scope parameter to tell TFVC which M3 label you want to work with.
You can prevent other users from "overloading" a label such as M3 in different parts of the TFVC server by either creating your label at the root $/ of the Team Foundation version control server or by adjusting Label permissions for certain folders.
Examples
The following example attaches the goodbuild label to the workspace version of the docs folder and the files and folders it contains.
c:\projects>tf label goodbuild docs /recursive
The following example attaches the goodbuild label to the docs folder but not to the files and folders the docs folder contains.
c:\projects>tf label goodbuild docs
The following example attaches the goodbuild label to version 3 of 314.cs in the TFVC server.
c:\projects>tf label goodbuild /version:3 $/src/314.cs
The following example deletes the badbuild label from all items in the TFVC server.
c:\projects>tf label /delete badbuild
The following example uses the @ scope option to apply a label to 314.cs.
c:\projects>tf label goodbuild@$/TeamProject1 314.cs