Configuring TFS check-ins scanner in JIRA plugin (deprecated)

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Last updated: Jun 10, 2016 by Former user (Deleted)
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This page describes configuration of TFS check-ins scanner in Jira plugin. Please note, that this feature is currently deprecated and check-ins scanning should be configured following instructions on page Configuring TFS / VSTS check-ins synchronization.

This method is not working properly since Jira plug-in version 5.1.6

If you have good reason to use this method please install TFS4JIRA plug-in in version 5.1.5

Defining TFS repository


In order to define a TFS repository connection in Jira, you need to navigate to Administration -> Add-ons -> TFS4JIRA Configuration  and click link shown on the screenshot below.


On screen Team Foundation Server Repositiories click link Add TFS repository.


 

After clicking Add TFS repository link a popup will apear, where you can enter TFS repository parameters.

 

Common Repository Parameters

You can configure the following parameters of a TFS repository:

Server URL

An URL used to access the TFS server (note that this is not the URL for web access to the server. It is the URL that is used by Visual Studio to access it)

Version 

Currently, supported TFS versions are TFS 2008, TFS 2010, TFS 2012, TFS2013 and Hosted TFS

Folder 

If defined (not empty), only the specified source folder in the TFS server will be queried for changesets. Otherwise, all folders will be queried. The folder can be specified with or without the leading $/ characters

Start at Changeset # 

The changeset number to start querying from. If left at 0, all changesets (the whole history) will be queried. Otherwise, queries will start from the specified changeset. This is useful for limiting the size of history and the time it takes TFS4JIRA to initially update its database

Note

After you define the TFS repository, TFS4JIRA starts querying it for changesets and saves the result in index files, so that retrieving check-in information is fast. Querying starts at the changeset number specified in the configuration and continues in batches of 100 (default value) changesets every minute.

This means that the initial scan might take a while, especially if you have a large repository.

After the initial scan is complete, TFS4JIRA is able to notice check-ins to a repository quite quickly - typically faster than a minute or two after the check-in is done.

Scan Size 

By default, TFS4JIRA scans 100 changesets every minute. Typically this results in adequate speed of scanning and moderate resource usage. However, sometimes it may be desirable to lower the number of changesets to scan at one time to avoid scanning error when there are particularly large or complicated changesets in your TFS repository. If you encounter scanning errors then you can try to lower this value.

Max Files in Changeset 

This parameter specifies the maximum number of files in a changeset that will be analyzed by TFS4JIRA (the default is 30). Limiting this amount prevents attempts to analyze huge check-ins, which are a result of operations such as cloning a big TFS project. Such huge changesets, if not treated in a special way (i.e. if their files are analyzed), can cause TFS4JIRA to exhaust all memory when it attempts to analyze their files. Also, it does not make much sense to display huge changesets, as it is very hard to find a particular file in them.

VM Parameters 

TFS4JIRA uses external application spawned from the Jira process to perform queries of the TFS repository. You can use the VM Parameters to set additional Java virtual machine parameters of the spawned Java process. A typical use case if to increase the heap size (using something like -Xms256m -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m)

Credentials 

You need to provide credentials of a user account that has at least read access to the TFS server that you are configuring

  • User Name

  • Domain

  • Password

TFS 2010, 2012, Hosted - specific Parameters

TFS 2010 and TFS 2012 supports the notion of "Project Collections". If you set the server version to "TFS 2010" or "TFS2012", you can specify the project collection to use when querying the repository. If left blank, the default colection (called DefaultCollection) is used.

TFS 2008 - specific Parameters

TFS 2008 does not include an out-of-the-box web access capability. This means that viewing files and changesets, as well as their history and diffs, require installation of a free TFS Web Access service. This service provides web access to TFS and exposes an URL, which has to be specified in the TFS Web Access URL parameter. If this parameter is left blank, there will be no links to file views, history and diffs in changeset views in issue panels.

 

Testing Server Connection

In order to test if the URL of your TFS repository and your credentials are correct, click the Test button. This will cause TFS4JIRA to perform a test connection to the TFS server. In case of errors, a dialog listing the cause of the problem will be displayed.

Managing defined TFS repositories

 

Once you define a TFS repository, it appears in the repository list, as shown in the image below. There are three links associated with each repository in the list:

  • Status – for viewing repository scanning status

  • Edit – for editing repository parameters

  • Delete – for removing repository information from Jira

  • Clear – for clearing cached repository information from Jira. This causes the repository to get rescanned and reindexed, which is useful in case a check-in comment or other changeset metadata gets edited