Clarity on teamcity parameters and its types

Question

I'm trying to understand about variables in teamcity. My understanding is there are 3 kinds of variables(System,Env,Config)

But in jetbrains documentation I saw more variables. Looks like agent variables and server side variables are separate.

But in TeamCity, parameters section when I select "kind" config or system or env, all kinds of values are populated (I Expected only relevant values should come)

Not really clear about when we have to use which variable. Is TeamCity having 6 variables for parameters(Serverside:env,sys,config and Agent:env,sys,config).

Answer 1

There are three types of parameters, they differ in a way they might be used in a build:

• env parameters are passed to the build process (spawned by TeamCity) as environment variable
• sys parameters set tool-specific variables (and therefore passed to the build scripts of the supported runners)
• config parameters are meant to be used for build configuration customization

There're predefined parameters exposing server build properties, agent properties, agent build properties etc. These parameters are passed to the build as system parameters, some of them are also copied to the environment variables.

In addition, parameters might be defined

1. for a certain build via "Run Custom Build" dialog
2. in Parameters section of build configuration/project or build configuration/project template
3. in buildAgent.properties file on the agent

More details might be found in the docs.