A last-minute regression was found in our beta 1 release due to some API changes made in jQuery. We've fixed these issues and released beta 2, which all beta 1 users will need to upgrade to.
We don't anticipate further showstopper regressions in beta 2 (knock on wood), but if there are, please e-mail the mailing list and file a bug and we'll take care of it!
Along with the Review Board 1.0 beta 1 release, we're also announcing a new package called RBTools, which had its first release tonight.
RBTools is the new home of post-review, and will in time contain new useful scripts for use with Review Board. No longer do users have to grab the latest version of post-review from our source trees. We'll be providing formal releases from now on.
To install, simply run the following (as root):
$ easy_install -U RBTools
Along with the new package comes some new features and fixes for post-review. A full summary is provided below:
Bugs Fixed in post-review:We've just taken one big step toward our 1.0 tonight with the release of Review Board 1.0 beta 1. This is an important release, and introduces new features, many performance enhancements, and a whole lot of bug fixes.
Two of the big highlights include the ability to disable user registration and some major performance enhancements.
The review request page now handles large numbers of reviews and comments in a much more elegant way. Previously, we'd fetch a diff fragment per comment from the server, which mean that if there were 100 comments, we'd fetch 100 diff fragments, slowing down loading. Now, we're only performing one fetch per reviewed file, no matter how many comments are on that file.
The other major improvement is in the diff viewer. Some deep profiling work was done on the comment and diff loading code in the diff viewer, and we've managed to speed things up significantly. In one of our tests, a large file with only 15 comments would take over 1 second of browser time to load and place comments on the diff. With the new improvements, that has dropped to about 150 milliseconds.
A full summary of the changes are below:
Bugs Fixed:Traditionally, our documentation hasn't been as in-depth and fleshed out as our users and ourselves would have wanted. We've used our Wiki to store various small pieces of documentation, and while better than nothing, too many people were still getting stuck.
I'm pleased to announce that we've fully rewritten our documentation and made it available directly on our website. There's a new Users Guide, Administration Guide, FAQ, and the beginnings of Code Base Documentation.
There's still more planned for the documentation. The goal is to prevent it from getting stale, and to update it any time something related updates in Review Board. Over time we'll add more details on various pieces of Review Board, allow users to give feedback on pages, and more.
We've tried to make sure to address everything that the old documentation addressed, but please file a bug if something is missing or confusing.
This year, Review Board has been accepted as a mentoring organization in Google's Summer of Code. This will give students an opportunity to contribute to Review Board and to get paid to do so, and it should result in some awesome features added in the next version of Review Board.
Students who would like to participate should look at our ideas page for possible projects and our Summer of Code Information page for some helpful links and details on participating.
We've also decided to continue offering Review Board hosting for projects participating in Summer of Code, even ones that aren't related to Review Board. This can help mentors to review students' code, keep track of what was done, and to introduce students to good code review practices.
If you have project proposals or questions, you can reach us privately or on our reviewboard-gsoc@googlegroups.com mailing list.
