Command-Line Client for Teamscale (teamscale-cli)

This article describes teamscale-cli, the command-line client for Teamscale. Among other things, this client can be used to integrate Teamscale with IDEs for which no dedicated IDE plug-in exists.

• Commands
  • The pre-commit Command
  • The open-in-browser Command
  • The generate-completion Command
• Common Options
  • Supplying Server Credentials
  • Overriding Branch Information
  • Logging (--debug, --trace)
• Finding Output Format

Commands

The command-line client exposes its functionality as a set of commands. You can use the built-in help option, --help, to list all available commands.

teamscale-cli --help

The various commands can be further configured by command-line options. Many options are common to most if not all commands, while others are specific to a command and explained in the following alongside their respective command. Additional configuration is taken from .teamscale.toml IDE configuration files.

The pre-commit Command

The pre-commit (or precommit) command uploads files to the Teamscale server for pre-commit analysis and, once the analysis is finished, displays findings for them in a common format. You can use this command in two ways:

1. Explicitly Uploading Files for Analysis: You can upload files or directories (including subdirectories) by passing them on the command line. For example:

   teamscale-cli pre-commit src/com/example/Example.java
   

   teamscale-cli pre-commit src/
   

2. Automatically Uploading Only Uncommitted Changes for Analysis: If the files and directories are under version control by a supported system (Git (opens new window), Subversion (opens new window)), you can use the --only-uncommitted-changes option to restrict the upload to only those files that have uncommitted changes. For example:

   teamscale-cli pre-commit --only-uncommited-changes src/
   

   This will automatically determine which files below src/ have local changes and only upload those for pre-commit analysis. (Files and directories not version-controlled by a supported system will never be uploaded when --only-uncommited-changes is used.)

Pre-Commit Upload Limits

The server may have an upload limit configured for the number of files included in a single pre-commit upload. Uploading entire directories is often prone to exceed this limit, even if only a few files therein have actually been changed. Using the --only-uncommitted-changes option avoids this problem in most cases, i.e., for smaller changes.

Further options, e.g., --omit-links-to-findings and --log-to-stder control how and where the findings are reported.

The open-in-browser Command

The open-in-browser (or browse) command opens the Metrics > Files view in a Web browser, showing the given file or directory as it is known to Teamscale. For example:

teamscale-cli open-in-browser src/com/example/Example.java

teamscale-cli open-in-browser src/

The Web browser used by teamscale-cli is your desktop's default browser. Consult your operating system's documentation for how to change this.

The generate-completion Command

The generate-completion command outputs a script that configures the programmable completion (opens new window) of the bash (opens new window) and zsh (opens new window) Unix shells to recognize teamscale-cli and offer tab-completion for it.

source <( teamscale-cli generate-completion )

To permanently install tab-completion support for teamscale-cli, you can either place the above line in your shell's profile (e.g., ~/.bash_profile) or save the output of teamscale-cli generate-completion to a file and execute it from there (e.g., by placing it in a bash-completion.d directory). Consult your operating system's documentation for the exact details.

Common Options

Many command-line options are common to most if not all commands offered by teamscale-cli. These are described in the following.

In particular, you can use the help option, --help, built into all commands to list their respective options. For example:

teamscale-cli pre-commit --help

Supplying Server Credentials

Some commands like pre-commit or open-in-browser require you to supply your credentials for the Teamscale server, i.e., your username and IDE access key. You can pass these credentials to the command in several ways:

1. The --servers command-line option:

   teamscale-cli pre-commit --server https://username:accesskey@example.com/teamscale/ ...
   

   (You can use the --servers option multiple times to supply credentials for multiple servers.)

2. The TEAMSCALE_CLI_SERVERS environment variable:

   export TEAMSCALE_CLI_SERVERS="https://username:accesskey@example.com/teamscale/"
   teamscale-cli pre-commit ...
   

   (You can specify multiple URLs, separated by spaces, to supply credentials for multiple servers.)

Both ways can be used at the same time. If different credentials are given for the same server URL, then the --server option takes precedence over the TEAMSCALE_CLI_SERVERS variable.

In all cases, credentials for a Teamscale server are given as a credential URL. If the Teamscale server in your configuration file (.teamscale.toml) is, for example, https://example.com/teamscale/, then the corresponding credential URL would look like https://username:accesskey@example.com/teamscale/, with username and accesskey replaced by your username and IDE access key, respectively.

Special Characters in Username and IDE Access Key

Certain characters cannot be used verbatim; they need to be percent-escaped (opens new window). In particular, this applies to the colon (%3A) and @-sign (%40). A username of user@example.com, for example, has to be written as user%40example.com.

Accidentally Exposing the IDE Access Key in Multi-User Environments

Using the --server option on the command line may accidentally expose your access key if other users on the same machine can inspect the command line of running commands (e.g., using ps or the Task Manager). To prevent this, place the --server option in an argument file (e.g., .teamscale-cli.args) not readable by other users:

--server https://username:accesskey@example.com/teamscale/

Then, include the options from the argument file using the @-notation:

teamscale-cli pre-commit @.teamscale-cli.args ...

Overriding Branch Information

Some commands like pre-commit or open-in-browser need to determine which branch has been checked out from the version-control system. This happens automatically for supported version-control systems (Git (opens new window), Subversion (opens new window)). If your version-control system is unsupported by teamscale-cli or if you need to override the branch that has been automatically determined, you can override it explicitly.

In order of precedence, the branch is determined from these sources:

1. --branch command-line option
2. project.branch property in your configuration file (.teamscale.toml)
3. Branch checked out from version control
4. Default branch of the Teamscale server

Logging (--debug, --trace)

In case any problems arise or you need to report an issue to our support, you can log debug or trace information by using the --debug or --trace options, respectively. These options are supported by all subcommands of teamscale-cli.

Optionally, you can refine which information is logged by specifying one or more categories. For example:

teamscale-cli --debug # --debug ALL

teamscale-cli --debug FINDINGS,SERVERS # --debug FINDINGS --debug SERVERS

You can look up the exact list of supported categories using the --help option.

Finding Output Format

Commands that report findings (e.g., pre-commit) do so in the GCC diagnostics format (opens new window):

Path:Line:Column: (error|warning): Message

• Path is an absolute path to the (local) file for which findings are reported
• Line (starting with 1) and Column (always 1) numbers denote the first position within the file where the finding is found.
• error and warning corresponding to red and yellow findings, respectively.
• Message is the finding's descriptive message

If the --show-links-to-findings command-line option is used, an extended format is used:

Path:Line:Column: (error|warning): Message | (Link)

• Link is a URL to open the Findings Detail view in a Web browser.

By default, findings are reported to stdout but can be redirected to stderr by using the --findings-to-stderr command-line option.