TFS 2010 - Bulk Updating Build Definitions (Retention Policies)

In this post, I just want to help those of you out there that have upgraded from 2008 and need to bulk update all of your definitions. In this particular example, I will be updating the retention policies to remove the deletion of the label with the deletion of the build. This code is not complicated but does pull in a lot of different areas. So, I wanted to provide an example for everyone...

Here's the code:

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Client;

using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client;

using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Server;

namespace UpdateAllDefinitions

{

    class Program

    {

        static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            Uri serverUrl = new Uri("https://jpricket-test3:8080/tfs/defaultcollection");

            TfsTeamProjectCollection collection = TfsTeamProjectCollectionFactory.GetTeamProjectCollection(serverUrl);

            IBuildServer buildServer = collection.GetService<IBuildServer>();

            ICommonStructureService css = collection.GetService<ICommonStructureService>();

            // Get a query spec for each team project

            List<IBuildDefinitionSpec> specs = new List<IBuildDefinitionSpec>();

            foreach (ProjectInfo pi in css.ListProjects())

    {

                specs.Add(buildServer.CreateBuildDefinitionSpec(pi.Name));

            }

            // Query for all the definitions

            IBuildDefinitionQueryResult[] results = buildServer.QueryBuildDefinitions(specs.ToArray());

            // Update all the definition objects

            List<IBuildDefinition> definitionsToSave = new List<IBuildDefinition>();

            foreach (IBuildDefinitionQueryResult result in results)

            {

                if (result.Failures != null && result.Failures.Length > 0)

                {

                    // print out the errors

                    foreach (IFailure f in result.Failures)

                    {

                        Console.WriteLine(f.Code + ": " + f.Message);

       }

                }

                // There still might be some definitions to modify in this result

                foreach (IBuildDefinition definition in result.Definitions)

                {

                    // Check for null, but we have already printed the error for this bad result above

                    if (definition != null)

                    {

                        ChangeRetentionPolicies(definition);

                        definitionsToSave.Add(definition);

                    }

                }

            }

            // Save all the definitions back to the server

            buildServer.SaveBuildDefinitions(definitionsToSave.ToArray());

        }

        private static void ChangeRetentionPolicies(IBuildDefinition definition)

        {

            // Update the retention policies to not delete labels

            foreach (IRetentionPolicy rp in definition.RetentionPolicyList)

            {

                rp.DeleteOptions = rp.DeleteOptions & ~DeleteOptions.Label;

            }

        }

    }

}

Hope this saves you some time!

Comments

• Anonymous
  December 27, 2012
  Hello Jason, Does TFS 2012 has web service "BuildService" or something that allow to change Retention Policies for projects? Thank you, inna

• Anonymous
  January 03, 2013
  I am not sure what you want to do. You can change retention policies in the Build Definition Editor or through code like the example above. This code should work for TFS 2012 as well. Thanks, Jason

• Anonymous
  June 04, 2013
  We had a request from our client to change the retention of all of their builds from the 2 latest to the latest only. Is there a way to do this for all of the builds in bulk?

• Anonymous
  July 17, 2013
  The only way to do this in bulk is to write a program that uses the TFS object model to make the changes. There should be plenty of examples of using the Build Object Model. You simply need to get all the definitions and update the retention policies of the definitions. Thanks, Jason