What's New in Review Board

Today brings what should be the final RC release before Review Board 1.0!

RC2 introduced a slowdown with a particular SQL query on the All Review Requests page that caused problems on large installations. Not only has that query been fixed, but further optimizations have been made to our queries to speed up the dashboard and other pages even more.

At this point, we're confident in our 1.0 release. Aside from the slowdown, we haven't seen any other showstopper issues. Assuming we don't see any this week, we plan to release 1.0 next weekend.

New Features:

• rb-site.exe is now provided on Windows and installed in the Python path, making installation easier. (Bug #1110)
• Added a loading indicator for the news display in the Adminsitration Dashboard.
• Automatically updates the stored path for media files when moving the site directory. Previously, this would break with no easy way to fix it, but now Review Board notices the move and updates the stored media directory properly.
• Added support for parent diffs for Mercurial. Patch by Colin Caughie.

Bugs Fixed:

• Fixed some major speed problems on large installs. One of the queries on the All Review Requests page could take an unusually long amount of time to finish when ran against a large number of review requests, which on some database setups could stall other queries, which would affect all users. These have been resolved. A side effect of this is that the "Last Updated" column in the dashboard may revert back to the "Last Updated" time on the review request after the upgrade to RC3, but this is a one-time issue and should be at worst an annoyance. (Bug #1144).
• Reduced concurrency issues when saving multiple comments when the server is slow. This could lead to broken reviews, causing errors. We now queue up the saves so that we don't attempt to save multiple comments at once.
• Fixed issues where files with \r\r\n newlines would break the diff viewer. This can happen in some Perforce setups when dealing with a file checked out from one platform and modified on another. Patch by Raghu Kaippully. (Bug #1071)
• Interdiffs containing two files with different revisions but the same content no longer displays an error. (Bug #1032)
• Properly marked the Password field as a password field in the Add/Change Repository form in the Administration UI. Patch by Sharan Rao. (Bug #942)
• The "Ship It" column now has the appropriate style on the All Review Requests page. (Bug #1115)
• Reduce the chances of concurrency issues internally when saving the Comment and ScreenshotComment database models. (Bug #709)
• Nercurial's HTTP support would fail when the repository served up raw files using the /raw-file URL instead of /raw. Our Mercurial support now tries both paths before giving up. This provides compatibility with http://bitbucket.org.
• The LDAP support no longer breaks when e-mail information isn't provided by either the LDAP settings or the server. An error in this case is now logged to the Review Board log file. Patch by Paolo Borelli.
• Improved the checks for the Git binary and for a valid repository in our Git support. Patch by Alexey Morozov.
• A review request with a bug number no longer causes a 500 error when the bug tracker URL doesn't have a "%s" in it. Patch by Paolo Borelli.
• Fixed the link for deleting a screenshot when on the diff viewer page. It was pointing to the wrong path. (Bug #1147)

It seems a few bad bugs snuck into RC1 that affected many users. Thanks to everyone who tested RC1 early and let us know! We've just released RC2, which should prove to be a much more reliable release.

We will probably put out one more RC release after this, which will improve installation on Windows and fix any remaining showstoppers. We'll then release 1.0 shortly after.

Bugs Fixed:

• Installation of new sites using rb-site was broken. (Bug #1012)
• The dashboard threw an exception when using PostgreSQL. (Bug #1099)
• LDAP e-mail generation was broken and caused an exception.
• Active Directory was broken for some users and caused an exception. (Bug #1112)
• We hit concurrency issues when saving reviews sometimes. We now register each with a ConcurrencyManager.
• Apache configuration files with spaces in filenames were still broken. (Bug #1111)

Feature Enhancements:

• Control-Enter now saves in the comment dialog, and Escape cancels the comment.

Update: There's a known bug in RC1 where rb-site install will fail on a fresh new install. We will have a new release soon, once we make sure there aren't any other major regressions. You can either attempt to install a previous beta and then upgrade to RC1, or you can use the May 4th nightly by running: easy_install -f http://downloads.review-board.org/nightlies/ -U ReviewBoard

One more giant step toward 1.0! We've just released 1.0 RC1, which contains a number of bug fixes, some new features, and usability improvements.

We've reached a new milestone with this release. Every pre-release issue in our bug database tagged for 1.0 has been fixed. This is a release candidate, so the hope is that this version will be stable enough for a final 1.0 release. If we don't see any major show-stopping bugs in the next couple of weeks, we'll release 1.0.

At this point, we are feature frozen. No new features will go in for 1.0, nor will bug fixes for minor bugs. Following 1.0, we'll be working simultaneously on a 1.1 and a 1.5 (or 2.0) release. The 1.1 release will contain bug fixes and some features, while 1.5 (or 2.0) will be a major feature enhancement release.

So with that, here's what you can expect from 1.0 RC1.

Bugs Fixed:

• The review request page was "jumpy" on load. The review request and review draft banners would display after the page loaded. We now display these along with the page, minimizing the jumpiness of the page.
• Saved settings weren't always taking effect until after the server was restarted. (Bug #734)
• The comment dialog wasn't appearing on screenshots. (Bug #1013)
• The comment dialog width was incorrect when showing existing comments.
• The Registration page wasn't working after upgrading to beta 1 until you forced a save on the General Settings page. (Bug #1033)
• Comment flags weren't always being shown on diffs. (Bug #1028)
• Site paths with spaces in the path resulted in broken web server configuration files. (Bug #1015)
• We were redirecting to the review request page when just saving a review, instead of staying on the same page. (Bug #1056)
• The left-hand side of a diff would be collapsed into a small column when showing an interdiff for a newly added file. (Bug #730)
• rb-site didn't properly allow for specifying a database host with a port number. Patch by Eric Huss.
• Different versions of a diff fragment were being cached with the same cache key, causing display problems when switching between diffs and interdiffs containing new or deleted files. This also broke anchors in the diff viewer. (Bug #1036)
• The review request page was caching the page contents without taking into account whether the user had a pending review or reply, making it appear as if the review/reply was lost.
• Linkified URLs were breaking when the URL was followed by an entity. Part of the entity was being embedded in the URL, breaking both the URL and the display. (Bug #1069)
• The black selection rectangle in the diff viewer was too far off to the left in Internet Explorer 8.
• Fixed some speed issues and warnings in our PNG transparency support for Internet Explorer 6. (Bug #817)
• LDAP and Active Directory broken on servers that don't support "givenName" and "sn" fields. (Bug #891)
• Bug tracker URLs that didn't include a "%s" marker caused breakages on review requests using bug numbers. (Bug #1091)
• The "Download Diff" link was displaying even when the diff wasn't accessible. We now use the same rules as we use for the "View Diff" link. Patch by Eric Huss.
• Clicking the edit icon (the pencil) on review requests sometimes caused the browser to scroll. (Bug #1057)

New Features:

• Added an activity indicator at the top of the page to show when a request is being made. Examples include saving a comment, marking a change as submitted, or saving fields on a review request. This appears as a small but eye-catching box at the top of the page with a spiner, letting the user know that the request is still being processed. (Bug #945)
• Changed the "Ship It" column to show the number of reviews marked "ship it" next to the checkmark. This makes it easier to see at a glance how many people have signed off on the review request.
• Drastically sped up the dashboard. (Bug #406) We were making a lot of queries in the dashboard, depending on the columns used. In a worst-case scenario, this resulted in a few hundred queries. A lot of work has gone into reducing the number, which both lightens the load on the database server and speeds up loading the page.
• Added an "All My Requests" entry to the dashboard's sidebar, which shows all open and submitted review requests that the user has made. Patch by Noah Miller. (Bug #503)
• Added a field to the General Settings page for selecting the timezone. (Bug #1038)
• Added URL, bug number, and review request ID linkification to reviews and replies. This works the same way that review request linkification works. (Bug #916)
• Added support for using mod_fcgid on Apache through the generated fastcgi Apache configuration file. Patch by Mark Knittig.
• Added "x" and "c" shortcut keys in the diff viewer for going to the previous/next comment. This is useful on French keyboards that don't have "[" and "]" keys. (Bug #1031)
• rb-site now warns about missing dependencies before starting the install, and limits configuration to what's available. This prevents the case where people would get part-way through an install and see it fail due to a missing Python module or database server. (Bugs #755, #756)
• Made the user selection fields in the administration UI more usable. They now display as a side-by-side view, with selected users on the right, and the list of users is searchable. Patch by Eric Huss. (Bug #912)
• Improved compatibility with Active Directory servers, allowing for using a "custom search root" that administrators can override for specific setups, and for using the server's "mail" field when available for e-mail addresses. (Bug #908)
• Added subtle animations for the review draft banner, indicating whether we're creating a new review or discarding one.

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:

• The help output for --repository-url and the error output used for when --parent isn't supported was referencing the wrong names for some parameters.
• Patches generated against a git tree were broken when running post-review inside a subdirectory of the root of the tree. Patch by Luke Lu. (Bug #928)
• Fixed a parsing error when using diffs generated by Git. Patch by Stacey Sheldon.
• Removed a duplicate CVSClient class, which added to the file's size and possibly caused some errors. Patch by Lepton Wu.
• Fixed a deprecation warning when using post-review on Python 2.6. Patch by Eric Huss.
• Fixed parsing Perforce changesets that include binary files. Patch by Raghu Kaippully. (Bug #585)

• Added new --guess-summary and --guess-description parameters for Git repositories that provide defaults for both the summary and description based on the commit messages on the branch. Patch by Luke Lu. (Bug #927)
• post-review can now look up the Review Board server URL from Perforce counters. See the documentation inside post-review or on the website for examples on how to set this up.

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:

• Fixed index errors shown during some interdiffs and empty diffs. (Bug #892)
• Interdiffs would break when one revision had a newly added file. (Bug #847)
• Interdiffs no longer pre-load all files on a page before showing anything. They now load each file independently, like normal diffs.
• We no longer display the "Download Diff" button on interdiffs. (Bug #873)
• Clicking the "ghost" comment flag in the diff viewer wasn't triggering a comment dialog for that line.
• We now correctly parse Git diffs that don't include "a/" and "b/" prefixes in the filenames. Patch by Andrey Fedorov. (Bug #883)
• We now forward on the Perforce Empty Changeset error, instead of returning an Internal Server Error.
• Fixed some problems with Perforce errors on newer versions of the P4 API, and fixed some issues where we were sometimes stripping valuable data from an error message. (Bug #710)
• Fixed an Internal Server Error when showing the review dialog with a comment made on a screenshot with no caption.
• The "Ship It" label in the review dialog is now associated with the checkbox, meaning the label can be clicked to check/uncheck "Ship It." (Bug #922)
• For LDAP backends, we now log on as an anonymous user before searching for the real user to log in as. This fixes some breakages with people encountered. Patch by Alexey Morozov.
• Changed the default LDAP scope to SUBTREE, in order to fix authentication on some LDAP servers. (Bug #959)
• We now use the review request's draft summary, if set, on the screenshot detail page. (Bug #981)
• HTML tags are no longer interpreted in the Description and Testing Done fields. (Bug #894)
• The "branch" field in change descriptions no longer escape entities (such as arrows). (Bug #898)
• Fixed some XHTML validation errors in the dashboard. Patch by Onkar Shinde. (Bug #932)
• We no longer require logging in for read-only API calls, if anonymous access is enabled on the site. (Bug #767)
• Fixed some small breakages with Django 1.1.

• Added a faster, more scalable version of diff fragment loading. We used to make a call to the server for each comment shown in a review, which became very slow on large reviews. We now only make one call per file, regardless of how many comments are made against that file. This speeds up load times of the review page considerably. (Bug #906)
• Greatly improved performance in the diff viewer. Loading comments and placing them in the diff viewer wasn't nearly as fast as it could have been. Due to these new improvements, a sample diff with 15 comments that used to take over 1 second now takes ~150ms to load. Other improvements have also been made, and should make a noticeable difference in large deployments.
• Improved accessibility for inline editors on the review request page. The "edit" icons can now be activated using the Enter key. Patch by Brad Taylor. (Bug #965)
• Added a new icon for the "My Comments" column in the dashboard that's used when you've specifically posted a review marked "Ship It." (Bug #909)
• Change descriptions are now a lot more readable for the Description and Testing Done fields. (Bug #913)
• Added a dependency on Pygments, in order to install it by default.

• Added support for disabling user registration. This provides a checkbox in the General Settings page for disabling user registration. This only takes effect when using standard authentication, and will hide the "Register" link and redirect requests made to /account/register/ to the /account/login/ page instead.
• Added new administration, user documentation, and a FAQ. This is available on http://www.review-board.org/docs/, and is also available in the reviewboard/docs/ directory.

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.

Some last-minute brokenness snuck into alpha 3, so we're releasing a quick alpha 4 that should fix it. If you installed alpha 3, upgrade immediately.

• post-review should now work with SVN regardless of the locale set. (Bug #888)
• Fixed an infinite loop in the Git diff parser. Patch by Dennis Schön. (Bug #887)
• The first file in the diff viewer would sometimes come back as escaped HTML. It's now embedded correctly.
• The comment dialog's "dirty" state wasn't being reset for new comments. This would leave reviewers unable to make new comments.

Review Board 1.0 alpha 3 has just been released. This release fixes a few major bugs introduced by 1.0 alpha 2 (over-aggressive caching primarily) and several browser-compatibility problems. Safari and Internet Explorer both had compatibility issues with some of the features we introduced, and we've since worked around them.

To upgrade from a previous alpha, just run:

$ sudo easy_install -U ReviewBoard
$ rb-site upgrade /path/to/site

A full summary of the changes are below:

• Generated settings_local.py files no longer have DEBUG=True enabled by default.
• The generated FastCGI and Apache config files should now work better out of the box. We had path issues in reviewboard.fcgi. We also now set the PYTHON_EGG_CACHE directory and default to processing .htaccess files in htdocs (which some distros don't have enabled by default).

• Fixed some major performance issues when typing in the diff viewer. This was the cause of many reports of slowdown and visual oddities when creating comments.
• Unchanged files should no longer show errors in interdiffs.
• Fixed file-based navigation ("<" and ">" keys) in the diff viewer. (Bug #696)
• We no longer show a nonsensical error when SVN logins fail. (Bug #721)
• Fixed anchors in the diff viewer. (Bug #828)
• Fixed the "Expand/Collapse Diffs" toggle in the diff viewer. (Bug #862)

• The review request page is no longer cached across login sessions. We were over-aggressive in the caching and are now a lot more careful.
• Upload Diff/Screenshot dialogs on Safari are now centered instead of being docked to the far-left side.
• Uploading diffs and screenshots now works on Safari.
• Empty Changeset errors in Perforce should now properly be shown to the user. They were in some cases triggering a server-side error.
• The Change Description field no longer animates open on page load.
• Sentences containing the word "bug" or "issue" no longer generate links unless followed by either specifically a number or a "#" followed by alphanumeric characters.
• Fixed some escaping issues in the review request summary, which would cause characters (such as quotes) to appear incorrectly. (Bug #860)
• Fixed some issues with auto-linking text in the Description and Testing Done fields. There were issues on initial page loads with linking URLs that were followed by quotes, "<" and ">". (Bug #864)

• We now pre-load the first file on a page in the diff viewer, in order to make it appear that the page is loading faster. Many people felt the new, faster diff viewer was slower because even after the initial page load, they had to wait to see any diffs. They're now able to work with the first diff the moment the diff viewer loads.
• Added hover/clicked styling for the review request action buttons.