Bulk release removal in TFS2017

Question

I have been removing unused releases in TFS 2017, due some of them were created automatically and never used. but this task is monkey job. I would like to perform a bulk deletion, or create an script to delete them.

So far, I was checking the REST API but there is no option to abandon or to delete the releases.

Any other suggestion?

Answer 1

Based on my test, you can use the REST API to abandon or delete the release.

Abandoning an active release : (Mentioned in the official document)

PATCH http://server:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection/LCTFVCScrum/_apis/Release/releases/10?api-version=3.1-preview

{
  "status": "abandoned",
  "manualEnvironments": null,
  "comment": "Abandon the release"
}

Delete the release: (Not mentioned in the official document, tracked with the Fiddler tool )

DELETE http://win-server:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection/LCTFVCScrum/_apis/Release/releases/9?api-version=3.1-preview

Both of them work well.

So, you can get the release list first using REST API (to get the release IDs), then create a script to delete the releases with the Release IDs which you want to be deleted.

Get release list:

GET http://server:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection/LCTFVCScrum/_apis/Release/releases