Review Board 4.0 Release Notes¶

Multi-Commit Review Requests¶

Review Board was first created in an era of centralized revision control, where a single patch corresponded to a single commit. Since then, the world has moved on, and it’s not uncommon to develop on branches where multiple commits all contribute to a single development task. While it was possible to review these in various ways using RBTools to post either ranges or individual commits, it wasn’t the ideal experience.

We’re proud to introduce true multi-commit support for Review Board. Each revision of the diff in a Review Request can now contain multiple commits which can be viewed and commented on, either individually or in ranges.

This is supported for Git and Mercurial repositories, and requires RBTools 2.0 or higher to post the changes.

Installation and Setup¶

The rb-site command received a large number of useful updates and fixes, aimed to help with routine tasks and automated installs. Highlights include:

• Better guidance for site creation.

  When installing a new Review Board site, rb-site now offers better recommendations and explanations, along with providing visual hints (colors and improved layout of text) to help you through your installation.

  Along with this, some old legacy options have been removed (such as mod_python and fastcgi support).

  You can disable color by passing --no-color.

• Simpler installation of optional Python dependencies.

  Installation of optional dependencies has been simplified. The following Python support modules can now be installed through pip:

  • LDAP: pip install -U ReviewBoard[ldap]

  • Mercurial: pip install -U ReviewBoard[mercurial]

  • MySQL: pip install -U ReviewBoard[mysql]

  • OpenStack Swift File Storage: pip install -U ReviewBoard[swift]

  • Perforce: pip install -U ReviewBoard[p4]

  • Postgres: pip install -U ReviewBoard[postgres]

  • Subvertpy: pip install -U ReviewBoard[subvertpy]

  • S3 File Storage: pip install -U ReviewBoard[s3]

• Help output for rb-site and all subcommands has been greatly improved.

  The help output has been greatly improved for rb-site and its subcommands. rb-site manage, in particular, has been extended to show the most typical management commands an administrator is likely to use.

• Added a rb-site install --secret-key option to specify the value for the stored SECRET_KEY.

  If you’re automating the deployment of Review Board instances that all talk to the same database, you can use this to ensure that they all use the same key. This is very important, as Review Board expects this value not to change between servers.

• Added a rb-site install --settings-local-template option for specifying a custom template for settings_local.py.

  This is also useful for automating installs when you have customizations for your conf/settings_local.py file in your site directory. The help output for this option will show the default template being used, which you can copy for your customizations.

• rb-site manage commands no longer need a special -- argument before the command’s arguments.

• Improved checks and error messages when failing to install a new site directory at a specified location.

  There’s no longer a generic error shown if the site directory can’t be written to or contains existing files. The error is now tailored based on what failed.

New Integrations¶

• Discord

  Discord is a chat system similar to Slack, but with a focus on communities, from open source to gaming to general discussions.

  Review Board can now post to Discord when review requests are posted or updated, or whenever there’s new discussions on the review request.

  See the documentation for configuration instructions.

  Patch by Hailan Xu.

• Jenkins

  Jenkins is a widely-used continuous integration, deployment, and automation service. It’s open source, self-hosted, and extensible with plugin support.

  This integration works along with a Review Board plugin for Jenkins to trigger builds when a review request is posted or updated.

  See the documentation for configuration instructions.

  Patches by James Shephard and Marcus Boay.

User Features¶

• Improved support for screen readers.

  We’re working to Review Board usable for people using screen readers or other assistive technologies. This is a long-term project, and won’t be complete right away.

  All new UI components have been designed with accessibility in mind, with more planned to be updated throughout the 4.0.x series and the next 5.0 release.

• Added an “Overview” section in the Dashboard (Bug #750).

  Until now, the dashboard has had an Outgoing section, which lists the review requests owned by a user, and an Incoming section, which lists review requests assigned to the user (directly or as part of a group).

  The new Overview section can be thought of as a union of those two, showing all open incoming and outgoing review requests.

  Patch by Bolarinwa Balogun.

• Quickly archive review requests by clicking on the inbox icon.

  The inbox icon in the actions bar of a review request shows a menu containing Archive and Mute options. It’s often annoying to wait for that menu to appear, so clicking on the icon itself will now trigger the archive/unarchive action.

  Patch by Malcolm Gomes.

• Added “Publish and Archive” to the review dialog and banner.

  It’s common to immediately archive a review request after publishing a review. The drop-down on the Publish button in the review dialog and banner now includes an option to publish and archive the review request with a single click.

  Patch by Guilia Mattia.

• Added live thumbnails for video files.

  Hovering over a video file will now load the video and play a short segment of it, to give you a sense of the content.

Administration Features¶

• Introducing a new administration UI.

  We’ve rewritten the administration UI to provide a cleaner look with a focus on mobile support. This fits in better with the general look and field of Review Board, and shares many of the components found throughout the rest of the product.

  Navigation is no longer split between a sidebar and a banner at the top. You now navigate solely through the sidebar. On mobile, navigation appears in the standard mobile menu.

• Read-only mode.

  Administrators can now put the site into read-only mode, which will be shown to all users accessing Review Board. This is intended for use when performing maintenance or upgrades on the server, preventing users from submitting data which might be lost during the process.

  This does not prevent all writes to the database (administrators can still make changes), but provides a good mechanism for preventing users from losing their work.

  Patch by Kanghee Park.

• Added new smarter object selectors for repositories and groups.

  Review Board 2.5.7 introduced a new selector for choosing users which avoided some of the performance issues that could arise with the default Django related-object selectors. This new selector UI is now also used for choosing related groups and repositories.

  Patch by Storm Kaefer.

• Custom “safe” URL protocols for Markdown rendering.

  Recently, in Review Board 3.0.21, we introduced enhanced XSS protection for Markdown rendering, making links safer and limiting the protocols allowed to http, https, and mailto.

  Administrators can now add additional protocols to this list by setting ALLOWED_MARKDOWN_URL_PROTOCOLS to a list of strings in conf/settings_local.py.

rbext¶

• Added new options to rbext test for unit tests.

  -e/--extension takes an extension class path and uses it to set up the test environment. --app can specify additional Django app labels to enable in that environment.

  -x/--stop will stop running tests on failure, while --pdb will open a debugger on failure. --with-coverage will showing a unit test code coverage report after tests have run.

• Improved rbext help output.

  The new help output for rbext and its subcommands go into detail on how to use the command to create extensions and run tests.

• Added new standard CSS classes for forms, buttons, spinners, sidebars, and more.

  You can make use of these in your own code to help your extension better fit in with Review Board.

  We don’t have any HTML documentation for this at this point, but you can find in-code documentation for the following:

  • Standard colors

  • Admin UI dashboard widgets

  • Alert boxes

  • Buttons, button groups, and menu buttons

  • Decorative boxes

  • Drop-down menus

  • Forms

  • Main page content boxes

  • Main page content headers

  • Main page sidebars

  • My Account configuration forms

  • Search fields

  • Sidebars

  • Slide-out drawers

  • Spinners

  • Tabs

  • Tabular data for review request fields

• Added new template blocks for defining extension-provided page classes, attributes, and options.

  Custom pages created by extensions should now override the following blocks:

  • js-page-view-type: The name of the JavaScript RB.PageView() subclass managing the page’s rendering.

  • js-page-view-options: Options to pass to the RB.PageView() subclass’s options parameter.

  • js-page-model-type: The name of the JavaScript RB.Page() subclass managing the page’s state.

  • js-page-model-options: Options to pass to the RB.PageView() subclass’s options parameter.

  • js-page-model-attrs: Attributes to set on the RB.Page() subclass.

• Extensions can define global variables for templates in a new global-vars template block.

  This allows you to define a variable once in a common place and use it in any other template block. For example:

  {% load djblets_utils %}
  
  {% block global-vars %}
  {%  definevar "my_variable" %}value...{% enddefinevar %}
  {% endblock global-vars %}
  
  {% block content %}
  {{my_variable}}
  {% endblock %}
  

• Custom JavaScript can now access RB.Product() to determine the Review Board version, release status, and manual URL.

Dashboard¶

• Fixed HTTP 404 Not Found errors when changing datagrid filters (Bug #4653).

  If the dashboard filters were changed while viewing a page other than the first (for example, going from archived review requests being shown to being hidden), the new total number of results may not have as many pages. This could result in the display of a 404 page instead of the results. The datagrid will now reset to viewing the first page when changing filters.

  Patch by Mandeep Singh.

Diff Viewer¶

• Rewrote the interdiff algorithm to address numerous edge cases.

  Review Board 3.x users on occasion noticed problems with missing lines in interdiffs, due to some bad assumptions made by the old algorithm. We’ve rewritten the algorithm to correct these.

  Please give this a test and report any interdiff issues to us, so we can improve upon the algorithm. Note that your memory cache and browser cache must be cleared in order for the new algorithm to be used on existing diff on existing diffs

Review Requests¶

• Fixed creating draft review requests when using Update > Add Files (Bug #4760).

  Using drag-and-drop to attach a file attachment to a review request without an active draft would correctly create a draft, but this was not happening correctly when using the Add File action.

  Patch by Sarah Hoven.

• Fixed the behavior of pressing Enter on the Upload File Attachment and Upload Diff dialogs.

  Pressing Enter used to dismiss the dialog, due to a bug. Now it properly submits the form. Pressing Escape will close the dialog.

  Patch by Hannah Lin.

• The styling for inline code literals (text surrounded by backticks) in Markdown text fields now looks the same whether editing or viewing text.

  This has been a long-standing issue since the introduction of Markdown support. We’ve finally made this consistent.

Review UIs¶

• Added application/x-javascript matching for the text Review UI.

  Many browsers are now referring to JavaScript files using the application/x-javascript MIME type (rather than the traditional text/javascript). This was preventing JavaScript file attachments from being reviewable.

• Tightened up MIME type matching to prevent over-eager assignment of Review UIs.

  Different user interfaces for file review are assigned based on MIME type, but the matching was too loose, especially for types starting in application/. This could result in the wrong review UI being shown (for example, a text file UI shown for a PDF attachment).

Subversion¶

• Fixed support for SVN diffs that only indicate deleted file information through a nonexistent indicator in the destination revision.

  Subversion has employed a few methods over the years to indicate deleted files, and the method used appears to be situational. We were missing this particular method, and now support it.

Authentication¶

• Fixed UTF-8 encoding issues on LDAP and Active Directory.