What's New in Review Board

Review Board 4.0.1 is a small bug fix release that fixes a few regressions and add some new polish.

Highlights:

• WebHooks once again dispatch correctly in all configurations.
• rb-site manage no longer breaks with custom commands in the $sitedir/commands/ directory.
• All administration database browser pages now load without problems.
• Extra whitespace in inline Markdown code literals is now preserved.
• Code highlighting in Markdown is now more consistent between edit and render modes.

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

We've been working toward Review Board 4.0 for some time now, and we're happy to announce that it's finally here!

This is a big release with a lot of user-facing, behind-the-scenes, and administrative changes. Let's dig into the highlights.

Multi-Commit Review Requests

When working with Git or Mercurial, review requests now track each and every commit that went into the change.

This provides reviewers with the freedom to review code in the way that makes the most sense to them. They can review each commit individually or select a range of commits to see and review at once.

Review requests can be landed to a repository or applied locally in either a squashed (single commit) form, or preserving each individual commit.

Support for Python 3

Review Board 4.0 is the first version to support Python 3. As of now, Python 3.6 through 3.9 can be used.

Python 2.7 is still supported. However, we will be dropping support in Review Board 5.0, so we recommend that people prepare an upgrade to Python 3 soon.

If you're an extension author, please be aware that you may need to update your extensions for both Python 3 and Django 1.11 compatibility. See the release notes for more information.

Jenkins Integration

The Jenkins integration can run automated tests and builds any time a new review request is posted or updated.

To get set up, follow the documentation and make sure you set up the Review Board plugin for Jenkins.

Discord Integration

The new Discord integration will post activity and discussions on review requests to your Discord channel. Teams using Discord can now stay informed on what's out for review, and what feedback's coming in.

Dashboard Overview Tab

The new "Overview" tab on the dashboard will show you all the review requests you have out for review, along with all the review requests that are in your review queue.

Publish Review And Archive

There's a new "Publish review and archive the review request" option available when reviewing a change. Click this to publish your review and then hide it from your dashboard until you get a reply.

Read-only Mode

Preparing for some downtime? Administrators can now place their Review Board server in read-only mode. This will prevent people from uploading new review requests, reviewing code, or changing their profiles, while you take care of your maintenance tasks.

New Administration UI

We've completely rewritten the administration UI to give you a better experience. It's mobile-friendly, with simpler navigation, a cleaner administrative dashboard, and screen reader support.

Smoother Installation and Management

It's now easier than ever to install optional dependencies for Review Board. We've added several special packages that will help install the right versions of the right dependencies:

• ReviewBoard[ldap]
• ReviewBoard[mercurial]
• ReviewBoard[mysql]
• ReviewBoard[swift]
• ReviewBoard[p4]
• ReviewBoard[postgres]
• ReviewBoard[subvertpy]
• ReviewBoard[s3]

Site installation and management has also been revamped, making it easier and faster to create new Review Board sites and to run common management tasks (like search index updates).

Plus...

• Live video thumbnails for video file attachments
• Improved support for screen readers (more improvements to come)
• New extension and API capabilities
• New automation options for site creation and management

Ready to upgrade?

First, make sure you have a backup of your database and site directory, and have tested an upgrade on a test server.

Please be aware that an upgrade can take time. You should also make sure your extensions have been updated to work with Review Board 4.0.

Then follow the upgrade instructions.

To learn more about Review Board 4.0, please read the release notes.

Power Pack 3.0.5 is a small bug fix release that addresses an important issue with PDFs.

PDF Rendering Fixes

Depending on the Review Board setup, a crucial file used to process PDFs would sometimes fail to load. This would result in a blank thumbnail or an empty PDF review UI.

We've tracked down this corner case and fixed it once and for all (hopefully). If you encounter any issues with PDFs, please reach out to us for support. Power Pack licenses entitle you to free support for any and all Power Pack features.

If you haven't upgraded lately...

In recent releases, we've added compatibility with the upcoming Review Board 4.0 release, fixed CSV export for Reports, and improved PDF compatibility.

Now's a great time to upgrade, or to start using Power Pack for the first time.

We're working on Power Pack 4.0, with new authentication features and database import/export. We should have more to show in a few months.

Learn more about Power Pack or upgrade your copy today!

Updated May 5th: We've followed this up with 3.0.23 to fix another regression impacting users who hadn't yet upgraded to 3.0.21.

This release fixes regressions in Markdown rendering, introduced by the security fix in 3.0.21.

The following Markdown features have been restored:

• Syntax-highlighting for code blocks
• Tables
• Emoji short codes (such as :thumbsup:)

Any broken Markdown introduced on 3.0.21 will render correctly after upgrading.

See the release notes for more details.

Review Board 3.0.21 and 4.0 RC 2 are out. These releases fix a security vulnerability, along with other bug fixes.

3.0.21 also introduces Docker support.

Security Fix

Both releases fix a XSS vulnerability in Markdown rendering, which could allow an attacker to craft a link that executes arbitrary JavaScript code when clicked.

The attacker would need to be someone who already has legitimate access to your server, and can perform reviews or otherwise access your code.

We recommend that everyone (especially those running public servers) upgrades to address this vulnerability, though the seriousness of the issue will vary from company to company.

Docker Support

Review Board 3.0.21 ships with new Docker support, helping you set up and deploy servers quickly without need to manually install anything.

This is still young. If you hit any issues, please report them to us.

Going forward, all Review Board 3.x and higher releases will include Docker images.

Compatibility and Bug Fixes

Both releases fix installation issues on Python 2.7, along with a handful of bug fixes and improvements.

See the 3.0.21 release notes and 4.0 RC 2 release notes for the full lists of changes.

Today's release of Review Bot 2.0.1 offers compatibility improvements for Python 3 and the upcoming Review Board 4.0.

If you're planning to upgrade to Review Board 4.0 upon release, we recommend upgrading to Review Bot 2.0.1 today.

What is Review Bot?

Review Bot is an automated code review tool that connects to Review Board, interfacing with many different code linting tools:

• BuildBot
• checkstyle
• Clang Static Analyzer
• CppCheck
• CppLint
• doc8
• flake8
• JSHint
• PMD
• pycodestyle
• pydocstyle
• pyflakes

Coming Soon

We're preparing a much larger 3.0 release with all-new tools, configuration options, and official Docker support. We expect this to be available in the next few months.

For now, see the release notes for the details on 2.0.1, or download Review Bot today.

Development is coming to a close with today's release of the first Release Candidate for 4.0.

If you're planning an upgrade to 4.0 upon release, please give 4.0 RC 1 and report any feedback you find.

Docker

Review Board 4.0 RC 1 ships along with a Docker image, making it easy to get set up quickly and to scale out as your needs grow.

Going forward, every new release of Review Board will ship with Docker images. We're also building them for Review Bot.

See our documentation to get started.

Improved Site Management

We've refined the rb-site install experience, offering better guidance all throughout.

New options have been added for automated installs, including specifying the site's SECRET_KEY, allowed hostnames for accessing the server, and even custom settings_local.py templates.

rb-site manage --help now shows all the most common management commands used with Review Board.

New Extension Testing Options

The rbext tool has been updated with new options to make it easy to test your extensions.

The new --extension option takes the extension class name and sets up a full test environment around it. Combined with the new --app option for adding additional Django apps, testing extensions has never been easier.

Bug Fixes and Other Improvements

• Improved keyboard shortcuts in the Diff Upload and File Upload dialogs
• Fixed search configuration on new installs
• Fixed some Unicode encoding bugs with LDAP and Active Directory authentication
• rb-site manage resolve-check no longer needs to be called after setting up a new site.

The full details, along with installation/upgrade instructions, are in the release notes.

Please report any issues (or successes!) you hit with either Review Board 4.0 RC 1 or the new Docker image. If all goes well, we'll be releasing 4.0 very soon.

We have two new releases of Review Board out today.

Review Board 3.0.20

This is a compatibility and bug fix release, focused mainly on ensuring Review Board 3.x continues to install cleanly on Python 2.7 environments.

There's also database-related performance improvements aimed toward large installations, and visual bug fixes on Firefox.

For the full list of improvements, see the 3.0.20 release notes.

Review Board 4.0 Beta 2

Thanks to everyone who tested 4.0 beta 1 and reported feedback. We've fixed the major issues, and hope you're ready for round 2!

Beta 2 brings:

• Fixes for regressions in search, LDAP, Active Directory, and Clear Case.
• Fixes for installation issues that some people encountered when setting up a new site directory.
• Fixes for Postgres database compatibility.
• Numerous improvements for rb-site, including better help, new options to help with automated installs, and providing custom settings templates.
• A new Repositories widget in the administration dashboard.

Plus a handful of other fixes and improvements.

For installation/upgrade instructions, and the full list of changes, see the 4.0 beta 2 release notes.

Review Board 4.0 is nearly ready to ship, after much development and testing. With the addition of multi-commit review requests for Git and Mercurial, Discord and Jenkins CI integration, and review and administrative capabilities, this is a release that we're very proud of.

We're opening this up to beta testers before we ship the final 4.0, and would like your feedback.

Let's look at the highlights.

Multi-Commit Review Requests

Git and Mercurial users can now create review requests covering multiple commits at once. Reviewers can review each commit individually, all commits squashed together, or a portion of the commits squashed together.

RBTools 2.0 or higher is required to post or land multi-commit review requests.

Discord and Jenkins CI

Prefer Discord over Slack? Jenkins over CircleCI?

Your review request updates and discussions can now be posted to Discord to keep your group informed. Jenkins can take on building and testing your code, posting feedback to your review request.

More integrations are on their way for 4.0.

New Administration UI

We've rebuilt the administration UI from the ground up. It's mobile-friendly, cleaner, with far better management of integrations and extensions.

Read-only Mode

Planning some maintenance? You can now put the server into read-only mode. People can still browse review requests and code, but they won't be able to change anything until your maintenance is complete.

Python 3 and Django 1.11

Review Board 4.0 beta 1 can be installed on Python 3.6 through 3.9. Or on 2.7, if you're not ready to make the upgrade.

We've also upgraded to Django 1.11. This will matter if you have in-house extensions, as much has changed. Fortunately, we've helped with some porting information, which you'll find in the release notes.

Plus More

It's a big release, and we've covered it all in the release notes, along with installation/upgrade instructions. Please upgrade only on a test installation for now, and not on your production server.

Give it a try and let us know what you think or if you hit any problems.

Review Board 3.0.19 enables new options for Review Bot, introduces a new experimental interdiff algorithm, enhances compatibility with several types of repositories, and improves the repository creation API.

Some New Review Bot Options

Review Bot users now have access to several new options.

Configured code checkers can now be set to run only on demand, by button click, which is useful for ones that take a very long time to run.

Failed builds can be retried, in case the failure was caused by a temporary issue.

Open issues piling up? Tools can now be set to drop all previously-opened issues they've filed the next time the tool is run, starting fresh.

A New Interdiff Algorithm

Some people have hit odd edge cases with interdiffs, where some lines seemed to be missing. This was due to a problem with the old algorithm, which we've been working out.

A new algorithm is coming in Review Board 4.0. If you're plagued by interdiff issues, you can preview this by setting the following in conf/settings_local.py:

ENABLED_FEATURES = {
    'diffviewer.filter_interdiffs_v2': True,
}

You’ll then need to restart your web server and clear memcached. We recommend trying this on a non-production server.

Better API-Based Repository Management

The Repository API can now create repositories backed by hosting services, such as GitHub or GitLab. It's no longer limited to plain, self-hosted repositories.

This is pretty advanced, but often requested. We're working on documentation, but in the meantime, reach out if you need assistance.

Plus...

• SSL fixes for Perforce
• Diff parsing fixes for Git and Mercurial
• Lookup fixes for JIRA
• Posting fixes for complex repository setups
• Authentication fixes for WebHooks
• Rendering fixes when publishing replies to reviews
• Saving fixes after copying-and-pasting into a text field

And more.

The full list of changes are in the release notes.