Team foundation build service new agent - tfs

I accedently removed 2 build agents on the server. I added them again in the administration console (and connected them to the same build controller again).
In the properties of my build I checked the properties to see if anything changed but he still connects to the same controller.
When I now do queue build I got this error and I don't know why:
TF203059: The Label 20120905.1#[file] already exists. Retry the command with a different label name.
I looked on the internet and everybody that has this problem is using the parrallel template but I'm using the default template.
Can anyone help me?
Kind regards,
Thibault Heylen

It looks like automatic labels are being created on build. You can disable labeling in the build definition if you want. You can also remove the existing label by going to the location in source control explorer. Once you find it, view history, then view labels, then remove the problematic label.

Related

VSTS, create build definition gets AllowScriptsAuthAccess error

long time listener, first time caller!
I've spent two days searching for an answer to this so hopefully someone here may be able to help.
I've set up a personal/free VSTS instance and created a project.
One of the first tasks I want to do is setup the build pipeline, so create a new pipeline, define the agent pool as VS2017, connect to my Github repo etc, all of which is fine.
Next I try to add an Agent Job, again choosing VS2017 as the agent. With no other options chosen, if I try to save the build definition I get the following error message (and cannot save it);
The AllowScriptsAuthAccess build option is not supported in API versions greater than 4.0.
Allow scripts to access the OAuth token is unchecked on the Agent job configuration under phases and on the Build/Options tab (slider set to disabled)
I've googled and searched for all sorts of stuff to try and find someone with the same problem but it's almost like I'm the first to discover this - which is highly unlikely!! It has almost driven me to using Bing to search for a solution, but let's not get carried away.
Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
So it turns out that turning off the "New YAML pipeline creation experience" and "New Navigation" under preview features fixes the problem, insofar as I can now create and save a build pipeline without the error.
Also, if you have "Build YAML Pipelines" enabled under preview features for the Organisation, you get the "View YAML" link that I was missing also.
Thanks all for your help. I'd be interested to know the root cause of this still. I'll update the Microsoft support ticket with the same and post back here if they have any insights.
There's an similar issue here:https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/123012/getting-multiconfiguration-build-option-not-suppor.html
Seems the build template was broken. So, you can try with other build templates or starting over with an empty template, then add the needed tasks manually to check if that works.
Besides, you can try below things:
Clean the caches on your client machine, also clean the browser
caches, then check it again. See How to clear the TFS cache on
client machines.
Create a new team project and create a new build pipeline within the
new team project to check if that works
I am assuming this is a bug in the VSTS system and it will likely be fixed soon. But for the time being, I found a workaround:
I was also getting the AllowScriptsAuthAccess error and struggled with it for hours. I don't think any of the configuration settings you mentioned have anything to do with it (free account, GitHub, OAuth token unchecked).
To solve it, I converted the Agent Job to YAML (which is as easy as clicking "View YAML" in the upper right). Save the code to a file named .vsts-ci.yml, and save this in the root folder of your solution. Commit/push the new file, then queue the build. (Note that the conversion to YAML is one-way, so you may want to Clone your build.)
That should get rid of the AllowScriptsAuthAccess error. After that I had to add a few variables, but then it's just a matter of following the error messages.
I hope this helps. Sorry I can't answer this more authoritatively. Please post a comment if I am missing any steps.
I had this issue and it turned out that I didn't have Build Admin permissions in VSTS for the project. Not a very helpful error message for this.

TFS2013 changes in the build template don't have any effect

I changed a TFS2013 build template and the changes don't take any effect, even if I force an exception. The changes are properly checked-in. New defined arguments are visible in the logs, but none of the newly added additional activities are executed, neither visible in the logs.
[update]
I didn't add any custom activities. I just added a new MSBuild activity just after the main build loop to build a WIX project. I also added some conditions to check whether there really is a WiX project to build or whether the given project exists.
[/update]
What could be a reason for that?
Thanks,
Juergen
In the XAML, there are 2 places where MSBuild is called, one for the "Clean" and one for the "Build".
If you add the activities to the just Clean activity, you won't see them run on the build. I usually just add my custom MSBuild stuff into both.

Is there a way to change the build controller for many build definitions?

Is there a way to change the build controller for many build definitions?
I've cloned a build server and brought it on-line before deactivating its build service, thus for a very small time I had 2 build controllers, with the same name, connected to the same collection at the same time. Now I've got 900+ build defs wanting me to manually reset their build controller. Has anyone got a script, tool, trick, tip, can I go via the API etc. (I don't want to do this if possible for time reasons) to fix this?
if you create a 'new' build controller, you can have it replace an existing controller, then AFAIK it should be a seamless transition from one to the other.
On your new machine, remove the existing duplicate controller, then add a new controller and select replace existing.
To change the Build Controller on multiple Build Definitions, you can use this Visual Studio Extension: Community TFS Build Manager VS2013

How to use TFS Build Process: LabelSources?

I'm attempting to modify my build process file for TFS 2010. I have a flag that is set when queuing the build, and when said flag is set, I want to create a Label, and add all the source files in the compiled project to that label.
On sequential builds, with the flag set, I than want to replace older source files in said label with anything new in the changeset being compiled.
I've been attempting to do this with LabelSources with no luck, and there is but vary poor documentation on either LabelSources or LabelWorkspace (whats the difference?).
Here's what I currently have:
<mtbwa:LabelSources
Child="[LabelChildOption.Replace]"
Comment="Published to Container"
DisplayName="Create Container Label"
sap2010:WorkflowViewState.IdRef="LabelSources_1"
Items="[{"$/Foo/LabelTest/Sandbox/"}]"
Name="[String.Format("{0}-{1}", LabelName, Version_Container)]"
Recursion="[RecursionType.Full]"
Scope="$/Foo"
mva:VisualBasic.Settings="Assembly references and imported namespaces serialized as XML namespaces"
Version="T" />
It definitely hits the action, but no labels can be found after the fact.
Any help would be much appreciated. and Any tangible documentation, other than Class Documentation with sparse definitions would also be greatly appreciated
Edit 1: Tried to clear up my goal.
What you are trying to do is built into the existing template. There should be an option in the process definition that refers to Clean Sources which will be set to True.
This option controls wither the build sources get cleaned, deleted and start afresh. Or if a differential is done.
If you have a lot of source code you can set clean sources to false and save a bunch of time getting the code.
You can also speed the build by placing a TFS Proxy on the build box which will cache the files and make a clean build quicker.
In my experience, Most of the built-in activities are poorly-documented for a reason - their only well-tested use case is their use inside TFS' built-in templates (DefaultTemplate.11.0.xaml, etc.). I'm afraid you're going to have to write some custom code, in the form of a custom activity, powershell script or something, to achieve other goals.
That said, I don't really understand the process you're trying to set up. Do you just want to have a label set as your latest-successfully-built sources? Why not use the one created automatically by the build itself?

What causes TFS to create additional workspaces?

I've seen the question related to the error message you get from TFS when a workspace is already mapped. The accepted answer for removing the workspace is alright as a workaround, but it's already getting tedious to run a delete command each time this error occurs.
What do I need to change in order to get out of having to use this workaround? I've got two builds (continuous integration and nightly deploy), and need to add at least one more build type. I followed this URL to see if there was a possible resolution there, but I'm not sure I understand it completely.
I am not sure how this is accomplished in TFS 2010, as I have not gotten to work with Team Build in 2010, yet. In 2008, though, if you expand the Builds node in the Team Project and right-right click on either of the builds, you will see a "Manage Build Agents..." option. Click into that, and it will bring up a dialog. One of the things on that dialog is an option called "Working Directory". Do you have the same hard-coded path in both of them?
By default, when you create a new build definition, it provides a calculated folder for this value. This is where the build agent will do the checkout from TFS for the build attempt. The default value is, $(Temp)\$(BuildDefinitionPath), I believe (I am not connected to TFS at the moment).
The article you link to is basically saying that you should include either that $(BuildDefinitionPath) value or the $(BuildDefinitionID) value as part of that path in that dialog so that the two builds do not try to use the same workspace. Changing the working folder to include one of those values should resolve your issue, going forward.

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