TFS & Visual Studio ALM – by Neno Loje

What is the Test Attachment Cleaner?

A command line tool that only removes the attachments. It does not touch the test runs, which contain the pass/fail data. So, running Test Attachment Cleaner will not impact the record of the test runs.

You need to Test Attachment Cleaner if you:

• Do manual test runs and want to delete attachments without deleting the test runs
• Do automated test runs and want to delete attachment for builds which have been deleted already, but the build definition’s retention policy was not set to delete “test results” (because this is turned off by default)

You do not need the Test Attachment Cleaner if you:

• Have automated test runs triggered by a build, and you have configured the build definition’s retention policy to delete “test results” (which is not set by default)
• Delete the Test Runs manually (as this deletes the attachments)

Where do I get it from?

The Test Attachment Cleaner is available as part of the TFS Power Tools:

• For TFS 2013: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/f017b10c-02b4-4d6d-9845-58a06545627f
• For TFS 2012: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/b1ef7eb2-e084-4cb8-9bc7-06c3bad9148f
• For TFS 2010, it was not yet part of the power tools and thus it’s a separate download: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/3d37ce86-05f1-4165-957c-26aaa5ea1010/

(Thanks Ravi Shenker from Microsoft for the input!)