VCS worker installation

VCS worker

Interaction with version control (VCS) servers is one of the resource-heavy parts of TeamCity. Until TeamCity 8.0, VCS operations could only be performed by TeamCity server itself. In version 8.0, we introduced an option to execute VCS operations in a separate VCS worker service, which can run on a separate machine (or even use several VCS workers on multiple machines). For example, you can route all Git VCS traffic through one VCS worker and all Subversion traffic through another. Furthermore, you can run the TeamCity server on Linux and still be able to use TFS by running a VCS worker on a Windows machine. With large installations, VCS worker(s) installed on separate machines should noticeably decrease TeamCity server load.

By default, VCS workers are disabled and TeamCity behaves as usual, i.e. performs all VCS operations from the main server process.

VCS worker is now provided with embedded support of Team Foundation Server, Perforce, Subversion, Git, and Mercurial. We are working on expanding the list of plugins and will publish instructions on how to convert a given TeamCity VCS plugin to work in a VCS worker.

Installation of a VCS worker

• open Administration | VCS worker page on the TeamCity server and download vcs-worker.zip
• unpack vcs-worker.zip on the target machine
• open port 9888 in firewall
• set JAVA_HOME environment variable to point at the installed Java JVM 1.6+
• start vcs-worker with <vcs-worker>/bin/vcs-server.bat start or <vcs-worker>/bin/vcs-server.sh start
• make sure you can open the VCS worker URL from the TeamCity server using ping or a web browser (e.g. http://vcs-worker-host:9888)
• open <TeamCity data directory>/config/vcs-worker.properties.dist
• un-comment worker.1.url line (remove #) and specify the worker URL, e.g. http://vcs-worker-host:9888
• copy vcs-worker.properties.dist to vcs-worker.properties
• TeamCity server restart is not required. You should be able to see the debugging information about a connected worker via http://your-teamcity-server/admin/admin.html?item=vcsWorkerTab

Advanced configuration of VCS worker

• check <vcs-worker>/conf/vcs-worker.properties.dist for more options (you can change the port, some paths, HTTP context path)
• rename <vcs-worker>/conf/vcs-worker.properties.dist to vcs-worker.properties
• restart vcs-worker to apply the changes

Running several VCS workers

• install another VCS worker on another machine
• edit <TeamCity data directory>/config/vcs-worker.properties and add worker.2.url=http://second-worker:9888 line
• if needed, use worker.1.vcsTypes and worker.2.vcsTypes settings to assign different VCS types to different workers
• save the file, no restart is required

All connected workers are listed under VCS Worker tab in the "Administration" section (http://your-teamcity-server/admin/admin.html?item=vcsWorkerTab)