Programmatically get TFS blame (annotation) data

Question

I'm trying to implement a plugin for Team Foundation Server 2010 that will create reports about users in a team project. Conceptually, all I need in order to properly implement this plugin is access to the same data that you get when you use the "Annotate" feature in Visual Studio: I need to be able to tell who was the last person to author a given line of code.

I've scoured the Internet for documentation or code samples, but all that I can find are either suggestions such as using the TFS command-line tools or seemingly incomplete code samples.

I don't mind doing a lot of heavy lifting in the client code, but there doesn't seem to be an obvious way to get useful authorship data about the contents of the code in a Changeset, nor from the merge details return.

Boris Modylevsky · Answer 1 · 2015-11-26T08:55:08.930

Meanwhile I found a working solution that executes Team Foundation Power Tools process and parses its output:

private readonly Regex m_Regex = new Regex(@"^(?<changeset>\d+)(?<codeLine>.*)", RegexOptions.Compiled | RegexOptions.Multiline);

public List<Changeset> GetAnnotations(string filepath, string codeText)
    {
        var versionControlServer = CreateVersionControlServer();

        return m_Regex.Matches(ExecutePowerTools(filepath))
            .Cast<Match>()
            .Where(m => m.Groups["codeLine"].Value.Contains(codeText))
            .Select(v => versionControlServer.GetChangeset(int.Parse(v.Groups["changeset"].Value), false, false))
            .ToList();
    }

    private static VersionControlServer CreateVersionControlServer()
    {
        var projectCollection = new TfsTeamProjectCollection(new Uri(@"TFS URL"));
        var versionControlServer = projectCollection.GetService<VersionControlServer>();
        return versionControlServer;
    }

    private static string ExecutePowerTools(string filepath)
    {
        using (var process = Process.Start(TfptLocation, string.Format("annotate /noprompt {0}", filepath)))
        {
            process.WaitForExit();
            return process.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();
        }
    }

I just implemented this and it doesn't tell you the owner of each line, only the changeset and code... — mellis481, May 11 '16 at 01:33
@im1dermike, you are right. It was good enough for my use case. — Boris Modylevsky, May 15 '16 at 10:10

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 15 '18 at 10:20

I had very similar requirement to get details of particular attribute in a file e.g. who added, when, related work items etc.; Following GitHub project is having implementation to get required details and required minimal changes to work-

SonarQube SCM TFVC plugin

It requires analysis to be executed from Windows machines with the Team Foundation Server Object Model installed (download for TFS 2013).

Programmatically get TFS blame (annotation) data

2 Answers2

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