TeamCity Current Date variable in MMdd format

Question

In TeamCity is there an easy way to get a variable for the current date in the format MMdd (eg 0811 for 8-Aug)?

My google-fu did not turn up an existing plugins. I looked into writing a plugin, but not having a jdk installed, that looks time consuming.

Answer 1

The Groovy Plugin for TeamCity provides build start date/time properties:

Provides build properties:

system.build.start.date / env.BUILD_START_DATE

system.build.start.time / env.BUILD_START_TIME

This blog post has installation / configuration instructions for the Groovy plugin, as well an example of customizing the date/time format.

Answer 2

This is quite easy to do with a PowerShell build step (no plugin required) using the following source code:

echo "##teamcity[setParameter name='env.BUILD_START_TIME' value='$([DateTime]::Now)']"

or (for UTC):

echo "##teamcity[setParameter name='env.BUILD_START_TIME' value='$([DateTime]::UtcNow)']"

This uses TeamCity's Service Message feature that allows you to interact with the build engine at runtime e.g. set build parameters.

You can then reference this build parameter from other places in TeamCity using the syntax %env.BUILD_START_TIME%

The advantage of this approach is you don't need to use a plugin. The disadvantage is you need to introduce a build step.

Answer 3

For Unix based build agents I propose next custom script as one of build commands:

export current_build_date_format="+%%Y.%%m.%%d"
export current_build_date="$(date $current_build_date_format)"
echo "##teamcity[setParameter name='env.current_build_date' value='$current_build_date']"

You have to make double % sign to avoid interpretation for date executable command line argument FORMAT string (see %Y.%m.%d) as already existing TeamCity variable.

Answer 4

You can also try Date Build Number plug-in. It povides additional var in build number format rather than build property.

Answer 5

To add a dated folder to my build in TeamCity I added the following to my custom script. What had me stuck was the double % sign in the date string. D'oh

TARGET_DIR=/Users/admin/build/daily
TARGET=$(date "+%%Y-%%m-%%d")

if [ ! -d ${TARGET_DIR} ]; then
  mkdir -vp ${TARGET_DIR}/
fi
mv -v build.dmg ${TARGET_DIR}/build_${TARGET}.dmg