Label command (Team Foundation Version Control)
TFS 2017 | TFS 2015 | TFS 2013
Visual Studio 2019 | Visual Studio 2017 | Visual Studio 2015 | Visual Studio 2013
Attaches a label to or removes a label from a version of a file or folder in the server for Team Foundation version control.
Prerequisites
To use the label command, you must have the Label permission set to Allow. To modify or delete labels created by other users, you must have the Administer labels permission set to Allow. For more information, see Default TFVC permissions.
Syntax
tf label labelname[@scope] [/owner:ownername]
itemspec [/version:versionspec] [/comment:("comment"|@commentfile)]
[/child:(replace|merge)] [/recursive] [/login:username,[password]] [/collection:TeamProjectCollectionUrl]
tf label /delete labelname[@scope]
itemspec [/login:username,[password]] [/collection:TeamProjectCollectionUrl]
Parameters
Argument
Argument
Description
labelname
Identifies the name of the label to attach, modify, or remove from the specified items.
@scope
Specifies a Team Foundation version control server directory within which the labelname is unique. This parameter lets you independently create, manage, retrieve, and delete one label or set of labeled items when two labels of the same name are in different parts of the Team Foundation version control server.
ownername
Provides a value such as DOMAIN\JuanGo or just juango to the /owner option.
itemspec
Identifies the file or folder from which to label, re-label, or modify. For more information about how Team Foundation parses itemspecs to determine which items are within scope, see Use Team Foundation version control commands.
Note
You can specify more than one itemspec argument.
versionspec
Provides a value such as c2 for the /version option. For more information about how Team Foundation parses a version specification to determine which items are within its scope, see Use Team Foundation version control commands.
comment
A user-provided comment about the label.
@commentfile
The user-provided path of a file on disk that contains the comment to use for the check-in.
username
Provides a value to the /login option. You can specify a username value as either DOMAIN\UserName or UserName.
TeamProjectCollectionUrl
The URL of the specified project collection that contains a version of a file or folder to which you want to attach a label or from which you want to delete a label (for example, http://myserver:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection).
Option
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| /owner | Specifies the name of the user who owns the label. |
| /version | Optional. Specifies the version of the file or folder to which the label should be attached, modified, or from which the label should be removed. These are changeset values, for example, C93. By default, Team Foundation uses the base workspace version if no versionspec is provided. |
| /comment | Adds or modifies a description or comment for the label. |
| /child | Not documented. |
| /recursive | Labels all items in the directory that matches your itemspec and versionspec. Cannot be used with the /delete option. |
| /delete | Removes the label. |
| /login | Specifies the user name and password to authenticate the user with Azure DevOps. |
| /collection | Specifies the project collection. |
Remarks
A label is a marker that you can attach to a set of unrelated files and folders in the Team Foundation version control server. Use the label to simplify their retrieval to a workspace for either development or build purposes. Therefore, a label is like a changeset or date/time to which and from which you can arbitrarily add and remove files and folders or change the versions of the items therein. A label is a version specification that can be passed to the following Team Foundation commands:
Common types of labels are milestone labels such as "M1," "Beta2," or "Release Candidate 0."
Labels are version-specific, that is, you can only attach a label to one version of a file or folder. Each version of an item can support multiple labels.
A label is not a versioned object; therefore, the label history of files is not tracked. Additionally, a label operation does not create a pending change in your workspace. When you issue the label command, the update is immediately reflected in the Team Foundation version control server.
For more information on how to find the tf command-line utility, see Use Team Foundation version control commands.
Removing and Deleting Labels
You can use the Unlabel Command to remove a label from a file or folder. Alternatively, you can delete a label from the system using the tf label /delete command.
For information about an existing label that includes a list of the items to which the label has been attached, its comment, scope, and owner, see Labels Command.
Managing Overloaded Labels
Label names must be unique throughout a specified scope. When you add a label, you reserve the use of that label name at or under the specified or implied scope. The default value for the @scope parameter is the project, for example, $/TeamProject1.
If another team or user adds a common label such as "M3" to a set of version-controlled files in a different part of the Team Foundation version control server, you can apply the M3 label to version-controlled files in your project as long as the root project folders are in different directories. For example, if files in the $/math directory are labeled "M3," you can apply the "M3" to files in your $/projects directory.
To get, remove a label, or otherwise manage your M3-labeled items, you should specify the @scope parameter to tell Team Foundation which M3 label you want to work with.
You can prevent other users from "overloading" a label such as "M3" in different parts of the Team Foundation version control server by either creating your label at the root ($/) of the Team Foundation version control server or by adjusting Label permissions for certain folders.
Examples
The following example attaches the "goodbuild" label to the workspace version of the "docs" folder and the files and folders it contains.
c:\projects>tf label goodbuild docs /recursive
The following example attaches the "goodbuild" label to the "docs" folder but not the files and folders the docs folder contains.
c:\projects>tf label goodbuild docs
The following example attaches the "goodbuild" label to version 3 of 314.cs in the Team Foundation version control server.
c:\projects>tf label goodbuild /version:3 $/src/314.cs
The following example deletes the "badbuild" label from all items in the Team Foundation version control server.
c:\projects>tf label /delete badbuild
The following example uses the scope option to apply a label to 314.cs.
c:\projects>tf label goodbuild@$/TeamProject1 314.cs