TFS 2010 Beta 2 - get source code for a deleted build?

Question

Here's my problem: In order to save space on our build server, I set up a build retention policy to keep the latest build only, thinking that this will only delete the files in the drop location.
Now I need to go back to a deleted build to include a bug fix and provide a patch. That's when I started to wonder where all our labels went...

Well, by now I've figured out that there's this option "what to delete" in the retention policy and will set it up to NOT delete build labels from now on, but is there any way that I can still reliably get the source files that were used to create this deleted build?

I will probably end up using the modified date of the deployed assembly to get the source code in this particular case, but since it's not 100% reliable and I deleted a LOT of build labels so it won't be the last time I have to face this problem, it would be nice to have a better solution.

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Edit: The reason why I think there might be a solution is this article: http://blogs.msdn.com/adamroot/pages/working-with-deleted-build-data-in-team-foundation-server-2010-beta-1.aspx.
I just don't know how to get source files from the data that's apparently still there after deleting a build.

Answer 1

I suspect if you've deleted it then you're looking at finding a backup. (You do back-up your TFS server, don't you? ;-))

Answer 2

If you don't have the labels any more, you're probably stuck with doing a last-changeset-before-this-date guess.

Or do a "bugfix" that includes a bunch of new features too ;-)

Answer 3

The answer is that you already know the answer. TFS 2010 makes it more difficult to delete labels than TFS 2008, and now you know why. During development, it's my opinion that it's not a big deal to delete labels, but once you release to the field, you want to keep the build data around in case you need to roll back. Disk space and backups are relatively cheap, so conserving disk space should not be as important as the ability to support your released products. You can delete files from a drop folder without deleting the build. The good news is that with some effort, you can get back to the state of your build, but that will be based on dates and changesets and such.