What's New in Review Board

We're in the home stretch for the big release of Review Board 2.5. Today's release candidate is, we hope, the last release before 2.5 goes live, so if you've been waiting for a good opportunity to jump in and test it out, now's the time!

This release primarily focuses on bug fixes, with a few new extension and Markdown improvements that came along for the ride. Some of the extension features (namely, new hooks that control some e-mail behavior) and fixes are ported over from the upcoming 2.0.19 release, so those of you staying on 2.0.x will be getting those soon.

Markdown input has gotten more stylish. Fenced code blocks, used to format blocks of code, will now syntax-highlight that code, just like the diff viewer. This supports 14 major languages, including CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, C/C++, Go, and PHP.

The login, registration, and password reset pages are now mobile-friendly, helping you to get going quickly on your mobile devices. Once you're in, you'll find some improvements to the dashboard and user pages to help you filter for the review requests you want to find.

See the release notes for the full list of changes.

Once again, barring any major problems, we will be releasing the final 2.5 soon. That means if you're planning an upgrade soon, you should really give RC 1 a test to make sure the final 2.5 will work for you.

Installing the beta

If you want to give this release a try, please do so on a test server with a copy of your production database.

To install the beta, run:

$ sudo easy_install \
    -f http://downloads.reviewboard.org/releases/ReviewBoard/2.5/ \
    -U ReviewBoard

(Note that pip is not currently supported for beta/RC installs.)

Please give it a try and report any bugs that you find!

Hey there, everyone! We have a great release this week for those of you living on the bleeding edge and helping us beta test the next generation of Review Board.

Review Board 2.5 beta 2 is out, bringing new API enhancements, UI polish, better dashboard management, the beginnings of mobile support, and more. This builds on top of all the features we announced for beta 1 back in March.

What you'll notice right away are the changes to the UI. We've been going through the product and working to polish things up, and have been making good progress. You'll see some tweaks to the review request page, file attachment thumbnails, the diff viewer, dashboard, and the New Review Request page.

So let's take a quick look at some of the highlights of the beta.

A dashboard with room to breathe

The new dashboard is a lot less crowded, and a bit more informative. Take a look:

We've also made the dashboard usable on a mobile device. In fact, most of Review Board is now usable, with the rest to follow. Try resizing your screen on our demo server to see how it works.

Tweaks to review requests

The review request page has some general tweaks all over. We've added tab-based navigation, increased the amount of room for the content, and more.

Shiny HD thumbnails

The file attachment thumbnails are now wider, and show more of the thumbnail than before. Hover your mouse over the thumbnail, and it'll scroll to show you even more of the page. If you're on a high-DPI ("Retina" display), your thumbnails will be even more crisp and clear.

A friendlier issue summary table

You'll also notice that we've completely redone the issue summary table, giving it a visual refresh and make it a lot easier to both see what's open and to filter it.

At a glance, you can now see exactly what's left on your plate without reading a bunch of text. To filter by a status, simple click the status. This is far better than the old text-based stats and drop-down lists we had before, don't you think?

Plenty more where that came from

That really just scratches the surface. We didn't even show off the mobile UI, the New Review Request page, or the new format for reviews. That will come in time.

Check out the release notes for everything in this beta.

You can also follow our work over at the Review Board ChangeLog, our new community forum for all things Review Board development.

Installing the beta

If you want to give this release a try, please do so on a test server with a copy of your production database.

To install the beta, run:

$ sudo easy_install \
    -f http://downloads.reviewboard.org/releases/ReviewBoard/2.5/ \
    -U ReviewBoard

(Note that pip is not currently supported for beta installs.)

Please give it a try and report any bugs that you find!

Today, Amazon released their all-new CodeCommit service as part of the Amazon Web Services family. CodeCommit is a Git repository hosting service built for scalability and reliability, helping to securely store encrypted versions of your code, binaries, and configuration related to your products and cloud infrastructure.

They've put together a guide on integrating AWS CodeCommit with Review Board that you can follow if you're wanting to give this service a try. It'll walk you through deploying a Review Board server, setting up access to CodeCommit, linking your repository, and posting changes for review.

Currently, setup requires maintaining an in-sync clone of your repository on the Review Board server. We're aiming to work with the CodeCommit team to help bring direct support for hosted CodeCommit repositories to a future release of Review Board and RBCommons.

For more information on getting set up, check out the CodeCommit page and read our guides on configuring Git repositories and our recommended RBTools workflows for Git.

Last week's release of Power Pack 1.3.1 hit some snags with Review Board installs running on Python 2.6.

We've fixed these issues, and things should work smoothly once again. Other than this fix, this release is the same as 1.3.1, meaning that if you're running on Python 2.7, you won't need to upgrade.

Getting Started

If you're new to Power Pack, you can get started by downloading a trial license and following the installation instructions. When your trial expires, you'll be able to keep all your current features for up to 2 people, forever.

If you're already using Power Pack, upgrading is simple:

$ sudo easy_install -U ReviewBoardPowerPack

Once installation completes, reload your web server, and you're good to go!

As always, if you have any questions or bugs to file related to Power Pack, e-mail us.

We have a new release of Power Pack for you today, featuring a number of improvements to the Microsoft Team Foundation Server integration and PDF document review.

I'd like to start with a big thank you to everyone who has worked with us to improve the stability of TFS in the past month, by filing reports and testing builds.

We'll cover the highlights of the release here. You can also check out the full release notes for more details.

Better TFS Support

The big focus of this release is our TFS support. We've made it easier to get started with TFS, simplifying the process for installation, and fixing compatibility issues.

We've worked around a number of TFS file type reporting issues, which led to broken diffs. If you still encounter any broken diffs, let us know, and we'll work with you to fix them.

There's also new support for TFS projects that contain multiple Git repositories. If you have a repository on TFS, it should now just work.

HD Thumbnails for PDFs

Power Pack 1.3.1 brings support for HD thumbnails for PDF files.

HD thumbnails are a new feature in the upcoming Review Board 2.5 release, offering higher-quality, spacious thumbnails that show more of your document at a glance. If you're on a high-DPI/Retina display, these thumbnails will really shine.

Getting Started

If you're new to Power Pack, you can get started by downloading a trial license and following the installation instructions. When your trial expires, you'll be able to keep all your current features for up to 2 people, forever.

If you're already using Power Pack, upgrading is simple:

$ sudo easy_install -U ReviewBoardPowerPack

Once installation completes, reload your web server, and you're good to go!

As always, if you have any questions or bugs to file related to Power Pack, e-mail us.

We have a great little bug fix release for you today! Our team has been hard at work squashing a few of the more obnoxious repository/extension-related that have come our way. This includes:

• Self-signed certificates on Subversion repositories.
• Compatibility issues when posting CVS/Perforce diffs.
• SSH-related problems on some Subversion setups.
• Some confusing errors during diff validation.
• Unnecessary Markdown escaping of text coming from commit messages or Perforce change descriptions.
• Packaging problems for static media files in extnsions.

That's just a few of our fixes. You'll want to check out the release notes for everything that went into 2.0.18.

2.0.16 may have come out just a few days ago, but it's old news now. We've made some fixes and tweaks to the improvements in that release, fixed up some small packaging issues, and added new extension-related enhancements.

We know a few of you have hit some of the bugs from 2.0.16 in your deployments, so we wanted to get this out to you fast.

The main highlights include:

• Extensions can now set custom data on reviews through JavaScript hooks, and listen to publishing-related events.
• Files that were copied but not modified will now appear in the diff viewer.
• Publishing-related errors in the API will now show up again.
• Errors with diff generation will show an error page, not a HTTP 500.
• Users making heavy use of private user profiles and the Depends On field for review requests won't see API errors when modifying drafts.

See the full list of changes for more details.

In case you missed it, check out the announcement for last week's release of Review Board. We cover the new security fixes, performance improvements, bug fixes, and new installation methods available satrting in 2.0.16.

The new 2.0.16 release is a nice mix of security fixes, performance, and bug fixes.

First off, this release fixes a security vulnerability recently reported that allows a user to craft a string that can, under the right circumstances, execute a malicious script. If you're running 2.0.x, we highly recommend that you upgrade, particularly if your server is public on the Internet.

Okay, now on to the fun parts.

A faster Review Board

The diff viewer is now fast. Very fast. You'll find some major speed improvements in loading and expanding diffs and viewing diff comment fragments.

Most other pages are a bit faster too. We've fixed and improved client-side caching behavior across the site. The speed improvement should be noticeable.

Lastly, in the performance category, we've identified and fixed a bug that could trigger unnecessary reloads of extension configuration, particularly when using Power Pack.

A more stable Review Board

We've fixed over 25 bugs in this release, spanning search, Unicode conversion, diff navigation, interdiffs, the API, extensions, Bitbucket, Git, Subversion, and more.

There are compatibility fixes for the latest versions of Whoosh and Haystack (both needed for search).

New features!

We've added support for browsing and posting commits on GitLab for review on the New Review Request page.

Using Mercurial? We've added compatibility with Git-formatted Mercurial diffs, which contain more useful information that Review Board can work with.

Extension authors can now choose to block review requests from closing or reopening, and can add new UI to the top of the review dialog.

Better installation through pip and Wheels

Like with RBTools, we're now officially releasing Python Wheel packages for Review Board, supporting the latest versions of pip. To install Review Board, simply type:

$ pip install --allow-all-external ReviewBoard

(In the future, we're hoping to eliminate the need for --allow-all-external.)

Signed releases

As of this release, we're now signing all Djblets and Review Board builds with our official PGP key. We discussed this previously in the RBTools 0.7.3 release announcement, so check that out to learn how to take advantage of this.

Final notes

If you're using search today, make sure to do a full rebuild of your search index. We've made some changes to the index format, which will break search results until reindexed.

For the full list of improvements, see the release notes.

We're back with another RBTools update, this one focusing exclusively on bug fixes.

This release fixes compatibility problems with Python 2.6, a few more Unicode issues, diff generation problems on Team Foundation Server, and more.

To get the latest release, head over to the RBTools Downloads page.

For the full list of changes, see the release notes.

Have you been plagued by Unicode errors when posting changes? Subversion 1.7.x compatibility problems? SSL errors with self-signed certs on Python 2.7.9+? Well then, today's release of RBTools 0.7.3 is for you! ... and, well, everyone, really. There's a lot in here you're going to want.

First off, the Unicode fixes. We had some Unicode-related breakages in past releases, which have been almost entirely eliminated in this release. If you've hit any such error before, give 0.7.3 a try.

There are lots of compatibility and behavioral improvements for Bazaar, ClearCase, CVS, Subversion, Perforce, Plastic, and TFS. Patching, for instance, works a lot more reliably across the board. Subversion 1.7.x and lower should start working again as well.

It's not all bug fixes, though. We have some new features and command line options:

• rbt post --stamp will auto-stamp commits with the review request URL.
• rbt patch -R can be used to revert a patch from a review request.
• rbt land and rbt stamp now work with Perforce.
• Perforce supports changesets with imported files from remote depots.
• API caching behavior and cookie storage can now be disabled/changed for any command. Useful for hooks and other scripts.
• SSL certificate verification can be disabled on Python 2.7.9+ by using --disable-ssl-verification.

Those are the highlights! For the complete list of changes, see the release notes.

But wait, we have a couple more announcements concerning our releases:

Better installation through pip and Wheels

We're now officially releasing Python Wheel packages for RBTools, supporting the latest versions of pip. To install RBTools, simply type:

$ pip install --allow-all-external RBTools

(In the future, we're hoping to eliminate the need for --allow-all-external.)

Signed releases

As of this release, we're now signing all builds with our official PGP key. Using gpg, you can verify a build was produced by us by importing our public key and then verifying it against the .asc signature files from our downloads.

For example, to verify RBTools-0.7.3.exe was produced by us, download it along with RBTools-0.7.3.exe.asc and run:

$ gpg2 --recv-key 4ED1F993
$ gpg2 --verify RBTools-0.7.3.exe.asc

(Note that if it complains about the key not being certified with a trusted signature, it's just because you haven't signed our key. If you see that message, and the primary key fingerprint is 09D5 06DA BB62 A09E 891D A9F3 2852 91B3 4ED1 F993, it's good!)

We'll have documentation covering this in more detail soon.

Thanks everyone, and as always, feel free to reach out with any questions.