Git

Git support in TeamCity is implemented as a plugin. Git source control with Visual Studio Online is supported.

This page contains description of the Git-specific fields of the VCS root settings. Common VCS Root properties are described here.

General Settings

Option	Description
Fetch URL	The URL of the remote Git repository used for fetching data from the repository.
Push URL	The URL of the target remote Git repository used for pushing tags to the remote repository. If blank, the fetch URL is used.
Default branch	Set to `refs/heads/master` by default. This is the default branch, used in addition to the branch specification, or when the branch specification is empty. Note that parameter references are supported here.
Branch specification	Lists the patterns for branch names, required for feature branches support. The matched branches are monitored for changes in addition to the default one. The syntax is similar to checkout rules: `+\|-:branch_name`, where `branch_name` is specific to the VCS, i.e. `refs/heads/` in Git (with the optional * placeholder). Read more. Note that only one asterisk is allowed and each rule has to start with a new line, see the section below.
Use tags as branches	Allows you to use git tags in branch specification (e.g.`+\|-:refs/tags/<tag_name>`). By default, tags are ignored.
Username style	Defines a way TeamCity binds a VCS change to the user. Changing the username style will affect only newly collected changes. Old changes will continue to be stored with the style that was active at the time of collecting changes.
Submodules	Select whether you want to ignore the submodules, or treat them as a part of the source tree.
Username for tags/merge	A custom username used for labeling.

Branch Matching Rules

If the branch matches a line without patterns, the line is used.
If the branch matches several lines with patterns, the best matching line is used.
If there are several lines with equal matching, the one below takes precedence. Everything that is matched by the wildcard will be shown as a branch name in TeamCity interface. For example, +:refs/heads/* will match refs/heads/feature1 branch but in the TeamCity interface you'll see only feature1 as a branch name. The short name of the branch is determined as follows:
if the line contains no brackets, then full line is used, if there are no patterns or part of line starting with the first pattern-matched character to the last pattern-matched character.
if the line contains brackets, then part of the line within brackets is used. When branches are specified here, and if your build configuration has a VCS trigger and a change is found in some branch, TeamCity will trigger a build in this branch.

Supported Git Protocols

The following protocols are supported for Git repository URL:

ssh: (e.g. ssh://git.somwhere.org/repos/test.git, ssh://git@git.somwhereElse.org/repos/test.git, scp-like syntax: git@git.somwhere.org:repos/test.git)
The scp-like syntax requires a colon after the hostname, while the usual ssh url does not. This is a common source of errors.
git: (e.g. git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git)
http: (e.g. http://git.somewhere.org/projects/test.git)
file: (e.g. file:///c:/projects/myproject/.git)
When you run TeamCity as a Windows service, it cannot access mapped network drives and repositories located on them.

Authentication Settings

Authentication Method	Description
Anonymous	Select this option to clone a repository with anonymous read access.
Password	Specify a valid username (if there is no username in the clone URL; the username specified here overrides the username from the URL) and a password to be used to clone the repository. For the agent-side checkout, it is supported only if git 1.7.3+ client is installed on the agent. See TW-18711. For Git hosted from Team Foundation Server 2013, specify NTLM credentials here.
Private Key	Valid only for SSH protocol. A private key must be in the OpenSSH format. Select one of the options from the Private Key list and specify a valid username (if there is no username in the clone URL; the username specified here overrides the username from the URL). Available Private Key options: Uploaded Key: uses the key(s) uploaded to the project. See SSH Keys Management for details. Default Private key - Uses the mapping specified in `<USER_HOME>/.ssh/config` if the file exists or the private key file `<USER_HOME>/.ssh/id_rsa` (the files are required to be present on the server and also on the agent if the agent-side checkout is used). Custom Private Key - Supported only for server-side checkout, see TW-18449. When this method is used, specify an absolute path to the private key in the Private Key Path field. If required, specify the passphrase to access your SSH key in the corresponding field.

Authentication Method

Description

Anonymous

Select this option to clone a repository with anonymous read access.

Password

Specify a valid username (if there is no username in the clone URL; the username specified here overrides the username from the URL) and a password to be used to clone the repository. For the agent-side checkout, it is supported only if git 1.7.3+ client is installed on the agent. See TW-18711. For Git hosted from Team Foundation Server 2013, specify NTLM credentials here.

Private Key

Valid only for SSH protocol. A private key must be in the OpenSSH format. Select one of the options from the Private Key list and specify a valid username (if there is no username in the clone URL; the username specified here overrides the username from the URL). Available Private Key options:

Uploaded Key: uses the key(s) uploaded to the project. See SSH Keys Management for details.
Default Private key - Uses the mapping specified in <USER_HOME>/.ssh/config if the file exists or the private key file <USER_HOME>/.ssh/id_rsa (the files are required to be present on the server and also on the agent if the agent-side checkout is used).
Custom Private Key - Supported only for server-side checkout, see TW-18449. When this method is used, specify an absolute path to the private key in the Private Key Path field. If required, specify the passphrase to access your SSH key in the corresponding field.

For all the available options to connect to GitHub, please see the comment.

Authenticating to Visual Studio Online

When configuring a VCS Root for a project hosted on Visual Studio Online, enable alternate credentials support in your VSO account.

true

Server Settings

These are the settings used in case of the server-side checkout.

Option	Description
Convert line-endings to CRLF	Convert line-endings of all text files to CRLF (works as setting `core.autocrlf=true` in a repository config). When not selected, no line-endings conversion is performed (works as setting `core.autocrlf=false`). Affects the server-side checkout only. A change to this property causes a clean checkout.
Custom clone directory on server	To interact with the remote git repository, the its bare clone is created on the TeamCity server machine. By default, the cloned repository is placed under `.BuildServer/system/caches/git` and `.BuildServer/system/caches/git/map`. The field specifies the mapping between repository url and its directory on the TeamCity server. Leave this field blank to use the default location.

Agent Settings

These are the settings used in case of the agent-side checkout. Note that the agent-side checkout has limited support for SSH. The only supported authentication methods are "Default Private Key" and "Uploaded Private Key" . If you plan to use the agent-side checkout, you need to have Git 1.6.4+ installed on the agents.

Option	Description
Path to git	Provide the path to a git executable to be used on the agent. When set to `%\env.TEAMCITY_GIT_PATH%`, the automatically detected git will be used, see Git executable on the agent for details
Clean Policy/Clean Files Policy	Specify here when the "git clean" command is to run on the agent, and which files are to be removed.
Use mirrors	Since TeamCity 9.0 When enabled (default), TeamCity clones the repository on each agent and uses the mirror as an alternate repository. As a result, this speeds-up clean checkout (because only the working directory is cleaned), and saves disk space (as there is only one clone of the given git repository on an agent).

Git executable on the agent

TeamCity needs git command line client version 1.6.4+ on the agent in order to use the agent-side checkout.

The recommended approach is to ensure that the git client is available in PATH of the TeamCity agent and leave the "Path to git" setting in the VCS root blank. If you only have the git command line on some machines, set "Path to git" setting in the VCS root to the %env.TEAMCITY_GIT_PATH% value.

Instead of adding Git to the agent's PATH, you can set the TEAMCITY_GIT_PATH environment variable (or env.TEAMCITY_GIT_PATH property in the agent's buildAgent.properties file) to the full path to the git executable.

If TEAMCITY_GIT_PATH is not defined, the Git agent plugin tries to detect the installed git on the launch of the agent. It first tries to run git from the following locations:

for Windows - it tries to run git.exe at:
- C:\Program Files\Git\bin
- C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin
- C:\cygwin\bin
for *nix - it tries to run git at:
- /usr/local/bin
- /usr/bin
- /opt/local/bin
- /opt/bin

If git wasn't found in any of these locations, it tries to run the git accessible via the PATH environment variable. If a compatible git (1.6.4+) is found, it is reported in the TEAMCITY_GIT_PATH environment variable. This variable can be used in the Path to git field in the VCS root settings. As a result, the configuration with such a VCS root will run only on the agents where git was detected or specified in the agent properties.

Configuring Git Garbage Collection on Server

TeamCity maintains a clone on the server for every Git repository it works with, so the process which collects changes in a large Git repository may cause memory problems on the server.

To ensure good performance while working with Git repositories, Git garbage collection needs to be configured: besides removing unreferenced objects from the repository, git gc also "defragments" some files under .git directory, which decreases memory usage on TeamCity server and increases performance. There's a feature request for automatic git gc, but at the moment you need to configure it manually.

To configure Git garbage collection:

Install native git on the server machine.
Define the following internal properties:
1. teamcity.server.git.executable.path=<path to git executale on the TeamCity server machine>
2. teamcity.server.git.gc.enabled=true
(Optional) By default, TeamCity executes Git garbage collection until the total time doesn't exceed 60 minutes quota, the quota can be changed using the teamcity.server.git.gc.quota.minutes internal property.
(Optional) By default, Git garbage collection is executed every night at 2 a.m., this can be changed by specifying the internal property with a cron expression like this:teamcity.git.cleanupCron=0 0 2 * * ? *
Restart the server for the properties to take effect.

When Git gc is configured, TeamCity will run it automatically in the background for all currently monitored VCS roots.

Internal Properties

For Git VCS it is possible to configure the following internal properties:

Property	Default	Description
teamcity.git.idle.timeout.seconds	1800	The idle timeout for communication with the remote repository. If no data were sent or received during this timeout, the plugin throws a timeout error. Prior to 8.0.4 the default was 600.
teamcity.git.fetch.timeout	1800	The fetch process idle timeout. The fetch process reports what it is doing in the stdout and is killed if there is no output during this timeout. It is deprecated in favor of `teamcity.git.idle.timeout.seconds` since TeamCity 8.1, the git-plugin uses it only if its value is greater than the value of `teamcity.git.idle.timeout.seconds`. Its default value was 600 before 8.1.
teamcity.git.fetch.separate.process	true	Defines whether TeamCity runs git fetch in a separate process
teamcity.git.fetch.process.max.memory	512M	The value of the JVM -Xmx parameter for a separate fetch process
teamcity.git.monitoring.expiration.timeout.hours	24	When fetch in a separate process is used, it makes thread-dumps of itself and stores them under `TEAMCITY_DATA_DIR/system/caches/git/<git-XXX>/monitoring` (directory mapping can be found in `TEAMCITY_DATA_DIR/system/caches/git/map`). Thread dumps are useful for investigating problems with cloning from remote repository. This parameter specifies how long thread-dumps are to be stored.
teamcity.server.git.gc.enabled	false	Whether TeamCity should run `git gc` during the server cleanup (native git is used)
teamcity.server.git.executable.path	git	The path to the native git executable on the server
teamcity.server.git.gc.quota.minutes	60	Maximum amount of time to run `git gc`
teamcity.git.cleanupCron	0 0 2 * * ? *	Cron expression for the time of a cleanup in git-plugin, by default - daily at 2a.m.
teamcity.git.stream.file.threshold.mb	128	Threshold in megabytes after which JGit uses streams to inflate objects. Increase it if you have large binary files in the repository and see symptoms described in TW-14947
teamcity.git.buildPatchInSeparateProcess	true	Since 9.0 git-plugin builds patches in a separate process, set it to false to build patch in the server process. To build patch git-plugin has to read repository files into memory. To not run out of memory git-plugin reads only objects of size smaller than the threshold, for larger objects streams are used and they can be slow (TW-14947). With patch building in a separate process all objects are read into memory. Patch process uses the memory settings of the separate fetch process.
teamcity.git.mirror.expiration.timeout.days	7	The number of days after which an unused clone of the repository will be removed from the server machine. The repository is considered unused if there were no TeamCity operations on this repository, like checking for changes or getting the current version. These operations are quite frequent, so 7 days is a reasonably high value.
teamcity.git.commit.debug.info	false	Defines whether to log additional debug info on each found commit
teamcity.git.sshProxyType		Type of ssh proxy, supported values: http, socks4, socks5. Please keep in mind that socks4 proxy cannot resolve remote host names, so if you get an UnknownHostException, either switch to socks5 or add an entry for your git server into the hosts file on the TeamCity server machine.
teamcity.git.sshProxyHost		Ssh proxy host
teamcity.git.sshProxyPort		Ssh proxy port
teamcity.git.connectionRetryAttempts	3	Number of attempts to establish connection to the remote host for testing connection and getting a current repository state before admitting a failure
teamcity.git.connectionRetryIntervalSeconds	2	Interval in seconds between connection attempts

Agent configuration for Git:

Property	Default	Description
teamcity.git.use.native.ssh	false	When checkout on agent: whether TeamCity should use native SSH implementation.
teamcity.git.idle.timeout.seconds	1800	The idle timeout for the git fetch operation when the agent-side checkout is used. The fetch is terminated if there is no output from the fetch process during this time. Prior to 8.0.4 the default was 600.

Limitations

When using checkout on an agent, a limited subset of checkout rules is supported, because Git cannot clone a subdirectory of a repository. You can only map the whole repository to a specific directory using the following checkout rule +:.=>subdir. The rest of the checkout rules are not supported.

Known Issues

java.lang.OutOfMemoryError while fetch repository. Usually occurs when there are large files in the repository. By default, TeamCity runs fetch in a separate process. To run fetch in the server process, set the teamcity.git.fetch.separate.process internal property to false.
Teamcity run as a Windows service cannot access a network mapped drives, so you cannot work with git repositories located on such drives. To make this work, run TeamCity using teamcity-server.bat.
inflation using streams in JGit prevents OutOfMemoryError, but can be time-consuming (see the related thread at jgit-dev for details and the TW-14947 issue related to the problem). If you meet conditions similar to those described in the issue, try to increase teamcity.git.stream.file.threshold.mb. Additionally, it is recommended to increase the overall amount of memory dedicated for TeamCity to prevent OutOfMemoryError.

Development Links

Git support is implemented as an open-source plugin. For development links, refer to the plugin's page.

Last modified: 20 April 2023