TFS Labels in a Build Continuous Environment with Jenkins

Question

We are improving our build process with Jenkins in a build continuous environment. We have a continuous build job that runs every time a developer commit code. An important question was raised today: Could we apply a TFS label for each success build ?

How many labels will a folder structure supports and when I’d like to see the history labels, if TFS will show all them all the time, or if it has a expert algorithm that show only that last X ones. and how the performance could be affect with a lot of labels for each success build. (We are estimate that will be more than 10/20 check-ins per day, generate 10/20 builds and 10/20 labels per day). And more, is there some way to filter labels in VS history window?

Answer 1

Yes, you could certainly label using the tf.exe command line, labels are always present, but can be filtered in the find labels dialog. I don't think they would affect performance in anyway except in the find labels dialog. However, in the TFS build system they also delete the label for a build when they delete a build from history so you may try to maintain that as well and delete all labels past a certain day, because in all honesty if you are labeling 10-20 times a day (or every build) exactly what is the value in those labels? Labels don't show in the history window, those are changesets (checkins) and have no relationship to labels. A label is a piece of meta data used to identify the version of each file across the whole workspace so that at some point if you need to rebuild it or inspect all of the files you can pull down the code by label and see the exact state of the workspace at that build. DO you really need to do this for all 20 builds a day? or are there special builds which are used to create the installer or package that will go to QA/Stage/Production? You may find it more useful to only label those builds.