I was stuck with the same problem and voted for the issue mentioned by Evgeny. One solution we thought, as mentioned sergiussergius, was to add a final step in the build-steps sequence to trigger manually the next build-configuration by passing custom-build parameters using the REST API. But in this case, we are loosing the build-chain information.
Using TeamCity 9.x, trying some stuff on the REST API, I could implement a solution who makes it possible to retrieve the triggering (ancestor) build and its parameters from the triggered (child) build.
The first thing we do is getting the current build using the environment variables set by TeamCity:
https://<host>/httpAuth/app/rest/builds/number:<env.BUILD_NUMBER>,buildType:(name:<env.TEAMCITY_BUILDCONF_NAME>,project:<env.TEAMCITY_PROJECT_NAME>)
In the response from the REST API, we have a /build/triggered tag which contains information about the trigger. It looks like this
<triggered type="unknown" details="##triggeredByBuildType='<triggering-build-configuration-internalId>' triggeredByBuild='<triggering-build-number>'" date="20160105T190642+0700"/>
The looks like btxxx for us.
From it, we can access the triggering-build (ancestor) using the following request to the REST API:
https://<host>/httpAuth/app/rest/builds/number:<triggering-build-number>'4,buildType:(internalId:<triggering-build-configuration-internalId>1,project:name:<env.TEAMCITY_PROJECT_NAME>)
from the response, we can get the ancestor-build's parameters values, and set it in the current build using:
echo "##teamcity[setParameter name='env.ENV_AAA' value='aaaaaaaaaa']")
Notes:
- this post reference TeamCity version 7.X. I did this using TeamCity version 9.X, and could not try it with a previous version. I don't know if the REST API calls mentioned in my post are similar in the previous versions.
- In this solution, the ancestor's build-configuration (the one who trigger the build) and the child's build-configuration (the one triggered) are in the same project. I did not do the test using build-configurations in 2 different projects: I would expect the "trigger" tag to provide information about the ancestor's project. It would be nice if someone could do the test.
I hope this solution may help!