What's New in Review Board

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.

Power Pack 1.3 is out, and builds upon the recently-introduced integration with Microsoft Team Foundation Server by adding support for TFS Git repositories.

You can now add a TFS Git repository to Review Board simply by configuring a new repository, selecting "Team Foundation Server (git)", and entering your repository's clone URL. Seconds later, your team can begin posting changes using RBTools.

This release also contains a variety of bug fixes for licensing and for reviewing PDF documents. Highly recommended for all existing Power Pack users.

As a reminder, Power Pack is now free for up to 2 users. Get started with a 30 day trial license, and after 30 days, Power Pack will continue to work for any two users you choose.

See our installation guide for instructions on installing or upgrading Power Pack, and our release notes for more information on 1.3.

For many months now, we've been hard at work on a new, major release of Review Board: Version 2.5. Finally, we're ready to share the first beta so you can <s>break it</s> play with it!

There's so much in here that I can't cover it all, so I've chosen a few of my favorite additions to talk about.

• Expandable diffs in reviews

  When reading through a reviewer's comments on your code, sometimes it's just not clear what they're commenting on until you open the diff viewer. We've fixed that. Now, simply hover over the diff, and the familiar controls for expanding the diff will appear. You can now see more of the diff without switching pages.

• Replace old file attachments and view their diffs

  File attachments on a review request can now be replaced with a new version of the file. You won't have to delete the old ones anymore.

  We also keep a history of each revision of the file, and allow you to see a diff between them. This works for both text files and images.

• Image diffs for file attachments

  As I just pointed out, you can now view diffs between images uploaded to a review request. We have multiple ways available to see what changed in an image. Very handy for new artwork for a product.

• Improved Review Dialog

  The Review Dialog is now instant-apply, meaning that when you make changes to a comment, you don't have to click Save to send those changes to the server. This is a life-saver when you're working on a large review and your computer crashes.

  It also now shows you how your Markdown text will look, so it's not a surprise when you publish your review.

• Better bug tracker integration

  If you use JIRA, GitHub, or modern versions of Bugzilla for your bug tracking, we'll now show you the bug summary, status, and description when hovering over the bug number. You may need to reconfigure your repositories to enable this.

  This is the beginning of some deeper integration we have planned for bug tracking. Future releases will expand on this even further.

• Webhooks

  Administrators can set up webhooks to notify other services when something interesting happens on Review Board. This currently includes publishing, closing, or reopening review requests, publishing reviews, and replying to reviews.

  Webhooks can be tied to review requests on specific repositories, or they can cover all repositories, or cover review requests not associated with repositories.

  A webhook will send a JSON payload similar to that of an API respons. If you have a service you're integrating with, and need a specific format for the payload, you can use a built-in templating language to structure your payload however you like.

• API Tokens

  Scripts or services that talk to Review Board no longer need your username and password to use the API. Instead, you can now create multiple API tokens for this purpose. API tokens are a secure way of authenticating with the web API without needing your credentials, and they can be revoked at any time.

  Scripts or services using API tokens can also be restricted to performing specific operations on specific parts of the API, letting you keep things nice and secure.

• Performance improvements for RBTools and the web UI

  Our API now allows clients to request only the data they need when making API calls. The result is that both RBTools (0.7 and higher) and the web UI are now much more efficient when communicating with Review Board.

• Smaller database sizes

  We've changed how we're storing diffs, and the end result is a substantial reduction in our database storage needs (as much as 80%, from our tests). If you re-run condensediffs, or when viewing older diffs, we'll squash down those older diffs into a much smaller, more tightly-packed version. In the long-run, this means faster upgrades and backups.

There's quite a lot more in this release. Check out the release notes for the complete list of changes in beta 1.

To install this release, run:

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

We don't recommend using this release for production purposes just yet, or against a production database, but please try it out and let us know how it works for you!