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Branches command

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Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server 2022 - Azure DevOps Server 2019

Visual Studio 2019 | Visual Studio 2022

Displays the history of a branch for a specified file or folder.

Prerequisites

To use the branches command, your Read permission must be set to Allow for the item and any branches to view their history. For more information, see Default TFVC permissions.

Syntax

tf branches itemspec [/version:versionspec] [/collection:TeamProjectCollectionUrl] [/login:username,[password]]

Parameters

Argument

Argument

Description

<Itemspec>

Identifies the file or folder that contains the branch you want to examine. For more information about how TFVC parses <itemspec>s to determine which items are within scope, see Use Team Foundation version control commands, Use options to modify how a command functions.

<versionspec>

Provides a value for the /version option. For more information about how TFVC parses a version specification to determine which items are within its scope, see Use Team Foundation version control commands.

<TeamProjectCollectionUrl>

The URL of the project collection that contains a file or folder in a branch for which you want to display the history, for example, http://myserver:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection.

<username>

Provides a value to the /login option. You can specify a username value as either Domain\username or username.

Option

Option

Description

/version

Specifies the version for the path. This option is rarely used.

/collection

Specifies the project collection.

/login

Specifies the user name and password to authenticate the user with Azure DevOps.

Remarks

The branches command tells you when an item has been the source or destination of a branch operation. The output displays the parent branch for each version.

For more information on how to use the tf command-line utility, see Use Team Foundation version control commands.

Examples

The following examples assume that c:\projects maps to the main folder in the workspace.

The following example displays branch history for the version-controlled file C:\314.cs.

c:\projects>tf branches 314.cs

The following example displays branch history for the header.h item in the Team Foundation version control server.

c:\projects>tf branches $/applications/header.h

The following example displays the branch history of the folder $/rel30/math.

c:\projects>tf branches $/rel30/math/

The following example displays the branch history for WindowsApplication13-branch. The results indicate the history for the specified branch by using angle brackets.

D:\projects\ws1>tf branches WindowsApplication13-branch
$/jun16-1/WindowsApplication13
>>      $/jun16-1/WindowsApplication13-branch   Branched from version 3 <<
                $/jun16-1/WindowsApplication13-branch-prime     Branched from version 5
        $/jun16-1/WindowsApplication13-branch2  Branched from version 3