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Tagging Jobs Dynamically

The system uses tags to identify specific jobs of a project, and to construct the name of the job directory in which process activity takes place by default. The system makes the tag for a job from the tag format property for the project, which can contain static text as well as numeric tag variables.

Note: Do not begin a tag with "BF_". Tags beginning with"BF_" are reserved for use by the system and cannot be defined by the user.

The default tag format for projects is BUILD_$B, which uses the default tag variable B, an automatically incremented value that is defined by the system for every project. This default tag format results in a stream of build tags as follows:

BUILD_1

BUILD_2

BUILD_3

You are not limited to these tags, however. You can define your own tag variables and set up your own tag formats to produce a variety of tag types. You can also use the .retag command during a job to change the tag to an arbitrary string (see Changing the Tag During a Job).

The current job's tag is available as an environment variable (BF_TAG) defined by the system during a job, so that you can access and use it to label source repositories, or for other tracking or labeling purposes. (For more information on these variables. See System-Defined Variables (BF_ Variables).)

You can synchronize the tag variables from two projects; this creates a link such that when either one runs, the same tag variable values are used. See Synchronizing Tags for details.

The topics in this section describe how to set up tag formats and tag variables to produce dynamic tags that reflect the values you want.