Where is the build log located in Team Foundation

Question

I am looking for the physical location of the TFS workflow log. Not the MSBuild Log but the log you see when you click "View Log".

I have read in other forums that the log is stored in an SQL database. But which database is it and specifically what table?

Thanks. Hope someone knows the answer to this.

Answer 1

The entire build log can be found in the Tfs_YourTeamProjectCollection database in the Tbl_BuildInformation. The Tbl_BuildInformation table contains self referencing entries to preserve the build log hierarchy, and all the build information is saved in XML. The information is saved as different node types which correspond to different build activities.

If you are interested in going down that route, I go into a little more detail in my blog. It is a bit much to post here.

Answer 2

You can view the log file by using the TFS web access link. See this MSDN post for more details. I just used this trick and it was fantastic. http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/tfsbuild/thread/14ce49ea-f61a-45e2-be32-beffc81ce415?prof=required

Another way to view the log is via the web access(right click on the build output tab and choose "copy full path" and paste it onto a browser) and the log does get downloaded so you can scroll down quickly.

Answer 3

The build log is a different view of the full which by default can be found under the [build location][Build name]\logs directory.

You can retrieve the list of log locations from the database by querying tbl_Build table in the Tfs_<CollectionName> database, e.g.:

   SELECT [BuildId],[StartTime],[FinishTime],[LogLocation]
   FROM [Tfs_DefaultCollection].[dbo].[tbl_Build]