Administrators who also review code: This release is for you.

Mercurial users: You, too.

Administrators, Review and Rejoice!

We never had the best experience for administrators who need to review code. When looking at a review request with a draft in progress, the administrator would see some information from the draft, some from the published review request. Commenting didn't work until the draft was published. It was... subpar.

We've completely reworked this experience.

Now, if you're reviewing code, you'll get the same experience as everyone else. You'll see only what's published. If there's a draft, or you need to make changes, you can switch over to a draft mode and see what the user's working on.

Stronger Mercurial Support

Managing your repositories with Mercurial? We've done a lot this release to make your workflows work better:

• Multi-commit review requests are better supported. A lot of corner cases from Mercurial's design have been worked around and fixed.
• Commits introducing binary files can now be uploaded, and those files reviewed in the diff viewer.

We have more Mercurial goodness coming in the next major release of RBTools.

Plus...

• Wider compatibility for downloaded Git and Mercurial diffs.
• Compatibility fixes for the latest Perforce for Python releases.
• Fixes for sending e-mails when DMARC DNS records aren't in a standard format.
• Various improvements throughout the review request UI.

All the details can be found in the release notes.

Let's get started!

To learn more about upgrading your server, see our upgrade instructions.

You can also use our official Docker images.

Review Board development is funded by Support and Power Pack

If you're using Review Board today, we'd like to see how we can work together. We offer:

• Full-service support contracts to help your IT department keep things running smoothly.
• Power Pack Document Review, Reports, new integrations, and more, with a free 60 day trial.

These help us continue to fund and grow Review Board development.

Dark Mode has arrived in Power Pack!

You can now review documents and analyze reports in the late hours of the night (when you should probably be sleeping) without bright light searing your eyes.

This is a free upgrade for all Power Pack users, and requires Review Board 7.0.1 or higher.

Power Pack 5.3 also comes with:

• An important security fix for viewing PDFs (pdf.js CVE-2024-4765).
• Automatic scroll lock when viewing diffs of documents.
• Better compatibility with Review Board 7.

For the complete list of changes and installation instructions, see the release notes.

What else does Power Pack do?

• PDF document review and diffing, allowing you to review documents, schematics, designs, contracts, and code all in one place.
• Report generation, giving you insight into code review practices in your organization.
• Advanced server management for scalability, database management, and splitting/merging installs.
• Eenterprise source code management systems, including AWS CodeCommit, Azure DevOps/TFS, Bitbucket Server, Keysight SOS, GitHub Enterprise, and ClearCase.

Review Board development is funded by Power Pack

You can try Power Pack free for 60 days or purchase a license for your Review Board server.

Review Board 7.0.1 fixes some important compatibility issues, and makes further improvements to the UI, building upon what we started in Review Board 7.

Let's dig in.

RBTools 5 Compatibility Fixes

In Review Board 7.0, posting changes against Git or ClearCase repositories using RBTools 5 could sometimes result in an error. This depended entirely on your RBTools and Review Board configuration and affected users who didn't specify an explicit repository in .reviewboardrc on a server without Power Pack.

This was due to a bug in our API combined with an oversight in RBTools 5. We recommend updating to 7.0.1 as soon as possible to avoid any issues posting changes for review.

Document Review Fixes

For users leveraging Review Board 7 with Power Pack for Document Review, you can once again move and resize your draft comments on documents. This had regressed in 7.0 but is now fixed.

UI Improvements

We've been working on further updates to Review Board 7's UI:

• Improved font sizes in the page header.
• Fixed a few button interactions (enabling/disabling extensions or deleting items from the database in the Administration UI).
• Introduced a whole new condition rule editor for configuring integrations.

Plus...

• Better stability when your cache server goes down.
• Asana integration fixes.
• Wider compatibility for building extensions with or without static media.
• Fixes for crashes when viewing some interdiffs.
• New API and extension improvements as part of the Review Board Platform.

All the details can be found in the release notes.

Let's get started!

To learn more about upgrading your server, see our upgrade instructions. You can also use our official Docker images.

If you need assistance with your server, we can help under a support contract.

They say it’s darkest just before the dawn. And whether that’s when you’re most productive, or in the middle of a warm, sunny day, Review Board 7 will help you see the code, documents, images, and reviews in an all-new light.

Review Board 7 introduces Dark Mode, all-new support for reviewing images directly in the Diff Viewer, Microsoft Teams integration, mobile-friendly diff review, and lots more.

And we’re not just releasing Review Board 7 today. We’re also releasing RBTools 5 and Review Bot 4, which help unleash the full power of Review Board 7’s new features.

Dark Mode

There's nothing worse than staying up late to review code and feeling blinded by your screen. With Dark Mode in Review Board 7, you can reduce eye strain and work comfortably no matter the time of day. This sleek new look not only helps in low-light environments but also adds a modern, stylish touch to your code reviews.

You can activate Dark Mode in My Account -> Appearance. You can also have Review Board automatically match your system theme, keeping it in sync with all your other applications.

Dark Mode is currently in beta as we continue to fine-tune its look and expand its availability throughout the product. It's not available yet in the Administration UI, Reports, or Document Review, but those updates are coming soon.

Image Review in the Diff Viewer

Projects aren’t made entirely of code and text files. Images can be a crucial part of your commits, too, often containing essential design updates, new artwork, or visual elements that define your feature. While this used to require uploading these images separately as file attachments, now they can be seen directly in the Diff Viewer with the rest of your change.

To upload images as part of your change, you’ll need to use the new RBTools 5 release and a Git, Mercurial, Perforce, or Subversion repository. This will ensure new images and changes to existing images are included with your code.

Once uploaded, images can be viewed and diffed using several modes:

• Two-Up: Shows the old and the new images side-by-side.
• Color Difference: Changes in colors are shown like an X-Ray, helping you spot even the smallest changes to an image.
• Split Mode: Overlays both images, using a slider to show or hide parts of each image.
• Onion Skin: Like Split Mode, but adjusting the transparency of the new image on top of the old.

Microsoft Teams Integration

Staying on top of code reviews is now easier with our new Microsoft Teams integration. Slack and Discord users have enjoyed live notifications of review request activity for years, and now, Teams users can too.

New and updated review requests, as well as any reviews or replies, are sent directly to your Teams channels. This keeps your team informed and responsive, no matter where they are.

An unlimited number of rules can be configured, helping you keep individual channels informed based on repositories, branches, or any other criteria. You can even keep sensitive review requests out of public channels automatically.

Mobile Diff Review

Reviewing code on the go is now easier with our improved Mobile Diff Review. On small screens, the diff viewer automatically switches to a single column, presenting changes in a mobile-friendly way without the need for side-by-side comparisons. This ensures a smooth and efficient review process, even when you're away from your desk.

Plus…

• A more polished and accessible UI throughout the product.
• Improved Jenkins CI compatibility.
• Configurable timeouts for CI builds.
• Updated default settings for the Dashboards for new users.
• Better Markdown review compatibility.
• Backed by Django 4.2 LTS for long-term security and support for your server.
• Increased stability, faster performance, and many, many bug fixes.

And that’s just Review Board! We have improvements in RBTools 5 and Review Bot 4 that we haven’t even talked about yet.

To learn more, see the release notes for:

• Review Board 7
• RBTools 5
• Review Bot 4

Ready to upgrade?

For most users of Review Board 5 or 6, Review Board 7 will be a drop-in replacement with minimal downtime.

Still, make sure you have a backup of your database and site directory, and please perform a test upgrade on a test server. Then follow the upgrade instructions.

If you’re using Docker, follow our Docker instructions to deploy new containers. Review Board 7’s official Docker images are based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Python 3.11.

Talk to us about Review Board Support to keep your server running smoothly and your developers happy.

Review Board 7 is coming soon. To get ready, we're putting out a series of releases that you can upgrade to today, starting with Power Pack 5.2.3.

What is Power Pack?

Power Pack is licensed add-on for Review Board, offering:

• PDF document review and diffing, allowing you to review documents, schematics, designs, contracts, and code all in one place.
• Report generation, giving you insight into code review practices in your organization.
• Advanced server management for scalability, database management, and splitting/merging installs
• Support for enterprise source code management systems, including AWS CodeCommit, Azure DevOps/TFS, Bitbucket Server, Cliosoft SOS, GitHub Enterprise, HCL VersionVault, and IBM Rational ClearCase.

You can try Power Pack free for 60 days or purchase a license for your server.

What's New in Power Pack 5.2.3

Power Pack 5.2.3 now supports Review Board 3 through 7, and makes the following improvements:

• When paid licenses expire, they'll convert to a free perpetual 2-user license.
• Installation issues with certain combinations of boto3, urllib3, and requests package dependencies have been fixed.
• Fixed an issue with draft comment visibility on PDFs.

For the complete list of changes and installation instructions, see the release notes.

We’ve launched a new installer for Review Board, with support for over 50 different system environments.

With a single command, you can be up and running in minutes, on nearly any Linux system, providing a virtually hassle-free experience, whether you’re installing Review Board for the first time or moving your install to a new server.

Using the new installer

It’s as simple as running the following as root:

$ curl https://install.reviewboard.org | python3

Or, if you prefer not to use curl and have pipx installed:

$ pipx run rbinstall

The installer will check your system for the latest compatible release of Review Board. From there, you can get an overview of the commands the installer will run, and then run them.

The installer also sets up:

• Automated code review with Review Bot, which can automatically review code using a wide variety of code checking tools, saving your engineers time during review and catching important issues quickly.

• A free 2-user tier of Power Pack, providing:

  Document Review, to help review your documentation, mockups, schematics, and designs alongside your code.

  Reports/Analytics, to gain a better understanding of how well your teams are using code review to improve your products.

  Additional repository support, letting you integrate with Azure DevOps, GitHub Enterprise, ClearCase, Cliosoft SOS, and other solutions you may depend on.

Automated/Unattended installs

The installer was built with automation in mind. You can set up entire fleets by running a single command:

$ curl https://install.reviewboard.org | python3 - --noinput

Or, with pipx:

$ pipx run rbinstall --noinput

To learn more, see the Unattended Installs documentation.

Docker is another great option

If you’re looking to simplify maintenance even further, we have official Docker images available.

This is a simple option for spinning up new Review Board servers for deployment or testing, complete with Review Bot and Power Pack. No manual installation required, and kept up-to-date as we release new versions.

Fully supported

Support for the installer, Docker images, and your whole deployment are included with a Review Board support contract.

This comes with 24/7 coverage for any emergencies or assistance you need, keeping you protected and ensuring you’re never on your own when things go wrong. We’re here for any questions you have, any problems you encounter, and any guidance you need.

If your server is currently unprotected, contact us about a support contract to take care of that today.

Learn more

See our guide to the Review Board Installer to learn how to run the installer, automate installation, and prepare older Linux distributions for installation. It’ll help ensure a seamless install the next time you’re setting up Review Board.

Have any questions or feedback about the installer? We’d love to hear from you! Contact us at questions@beanbaginc.com.

Today's releases fix an important security vulnerability we've found in-house, and improve stability overall in Review Board 6.

API Security Fix

We discovered a security issue with two of our APIs while performing an in-house performance audit of our code. This allows a user with legitimate access to a Review Board server to craft a specific API request that returns diff content they wouldn't normally have permission to access (draft diffs or published diffs associated with a private repository or invite-only review group).

Users cannot exploit this bug without legitimate access to the Review Board server (or the Local Site server partition, if used).

We aren't aware of this vulnerability being used in the wild. It requires making use of an optional header when accessing these APIs, plus knowledge of internal database APIs for published diffs.

As part of fixing this security issue, we've done the following:

1. We sent patches (and custom builds as needed) to our customers with Premium Support contracts.
2. We audited the remainder of our APIs. This type of issue was not found anywhere else.
3. We improved our testing infrastructure so that this type of issue would be found automatically going forward.

We recommend that everyone upgrade to the appropriate release of Review Board.

Review Board 6 Stability

We've addressed a few regressions introduced in Review Board 6.0:

• Manually uploading diffs (either to new or existing review requests) should now work on all types of repositories.
• Batch publishing will now work when using Local Site server partitions.
• Empty reviews will no longer be posted if creating a review, leaving comments, and then deleting the comments.
• Switching between search engine backends no longer require restarting the web server.
• Logging in from the Log Out page now takes you to the dashboard, instead of logging you back out.
• Some minor UI issues in the Administration UI have been fixed.

Upgrading

If you're using our official releases, follow the upgrade instructions in the release notes below:

• Review Board 6.0.2
• Review Board 5.0.7
• Review Board 4.0.13
• Review Board 3.0.26

If you're using releases provided by your Linux distribution or a third-party, you will need to inquire with them about your upgrade options and support.

If you need assistance with your server, we can help under a support contract. This entitles you to on-going support for your server, custom builds, backported fixes, pre-release security patches, and solutions tailored for your company's needs.

Review Board 6.0.1 fixes a handful of bugs found in the recent 6.0 release:

• Reviews and replies should now successfully publish in all cases.

• Administrators can once again see and edit another user's draft review requests.

• Compatibility issues with subdirectory installs or Local Site partitioning have been resolved.

• Plus other bug fixes throughout the product.

All the details can be found in the release notes.

Asana and Trello integrations updates

We've also released Review Board Integrations 3.1.1, which fixes compatibility with Trello and Asana. This must be upgraded manually for now:

$ pip3 install rbintegrations==3.1.1

This is compatible with both Review Board 5 and 6.

Let's get started!

To learn more about upgrading your server, see our upgrade instructions. You can also use our official Docker images.

If you need assistance with your server, we can help under a support contract.

Review Board 6 is all about focusing on your code review experience in a pleasant environment.

The UI is bright, soft, and colorful. The diffs are easier on the eyes, and easier to navigate. The review process is streamlined, a new review banner guiding you through creating, managing, and publishing your review request, reviews, and replies. Rich commenting is effortless, with Markdown formatting aided by a helpful new toolbar.

And that's just the beginning. Let us introduce you to Review Board 6.

A bright start

We’ve been improving the look and feel of Review Board, softening and brightening the visuals, giving content some breathing room, and sanding down rough edges.

The color palette and font size used in diffs have been refined to make it easier to read long blocks of code.

Much of our UI has been made more accessible and mobile-friendly.

This is the first step toward a larger UI refresh planned for Review Board 7.

Looking for something less bright? Say, a dark mode? That's in the works, but for now, we find Dark Reader to be pretty useful ourselves!

An improved review experience

In past versions of Review Board, your draft review requests, reviews, and replies were all managed separately, each with its own green draft banner.

Review Board 6 now includes a new Unified Review Banner, which summarizes every draft that still needs to be published on a review request.

This banner allows you to:

• See all your drafts in one place
• Publish all your drafts together with fewer e-mails, or publish them independently as before
• Create new reviews on a review request

This banner is always visible on the screen, and will help guide you through the review process.

The old Review, Add Comment, and Ship It! buttons on the review request’s action bar have been moved to a new Review menu on the banner, helping you create, manage, and publish your reviews from anywhere on a review request.

To help get going, we’ve added new tips and tricks to the Review Dialog, shown when clicking Review -> Create a New Review.

And finally, you can review your own diffs and files before they’re published, helping make comments that guide reviewers through your change.

Craft Markdown comments with a click

It’s easier than ever to compose Markdown text for your reviews, comments, and review requests through the new Markdown formatting toolbar.

Toggle between bold, italic, strike-through, and code literals. Create lists, link to URLs, and then go beyond text by uploading and embedding images.

Better file attachment management

File attachments are an important part of many people's workflows. Review Board 6 now makes it easier to track which files are published, which you're introducing in a draft, and which are pending deletion.

When adding, updating, or deleting file attachments, a label is now placed on the thumbnail showing its status:

• New: The file attachment was newly-added in this draft.
• New Revision: A new, updated revision of a file attachment was added in this draft.
• Pending Deletion: The file attachment will be deleted when the draft is published.
• Draft: The file attachment’s caption has been updated in the draft.

If a file attachment is pending deletion, you can now restore it by clicking Undo Delete in the file attachment’s actions menu.

Take action with extensions

Review Board’s extension abilities have grown once again.

The new Actions system makes it easier to add, hide, and reorder actions on the review request’s action bar, on the page header, and the navigation bar.

Client-side extensions can now be written using TypeScript and Spina, and bound together using ES Modules.

Server-side extensions can benefit from enhanced Python type hints and pytest-based unit tests.

Important compatibility updates

We’ve dropped support for Python 3.7 and added 3.12. Please note that not all third-party repository support is compatible yet with 3.12.

We’ve also dropped Subvertpy support. To use Subversion with Review Board, make sure to install PySVN.

Plus…

• Faster automated code review results
• A better default view for dashboards, showing all your incoming and outgoing review requests
• A service health check URL (/health/) for monitoring, scaling, and fault tolerance
• New Single Sign-On options, for wider Identity Provider compatibility
• Enhanced API error reporting, with string-based error types
• Performance and usability improvements all throughout Review Board
• And more!

The Review Board 6 release notes cover all the changes in this release in detail.

Ready to upgrade?

For most users of Review Board 5, Review Board 6 will be a drop-in replacement with minimal downtime.

Still, make sure you have a backup of your database and site directory, and please perform a test upgrade on a test server. Then follow the upgrade instructions.

If you’re using Docker, follow our Docker instructions to deploy new containers. Review Board 6’s official Docker images are based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Python 3.11.

If you need assistance, we can help support your Review Board server with a plan that meets your needs.

Review Board 5.0.6 is a bug fix release, featuring:

• MySQL installation fixes
• Review Group API improvements
• Several bug fixes

Let's take a look.

MySQL Installation Fixes

The recent versions of mysqlclient fail to install on many Linux distributions, and this makes for a frustrating Review Board installation experience.

Now, when installing the ReviewBoard[mysql] package, we now cap this to the 2.1.x series, which installs the same way as prior versions.

You can learn more about this issue on the mysqlclient GitHub, and in our MySQL installation instructions. We'll continue to track development around this issue, and update our documentation and requirements if the situation changes.

Review Group API Improvements

The Review Group API now supports querying for:

• Hidden accessible review groups
• Review groups based on the invite_only flag
• Hidden invite-only review groups when using the special reviews.can_view_invite_only_groups user permission

Plus...

• Improvements for the upgrade process
• Fixes for file attachment diffs
• Fixes for updating file attachments with new revisions
• Showing hidden review groups and repositories for Default Reviewers, integration conditions, and more

All the details can be found in the release notes.

To learn more about upgrading your server, see our upgrade instructions. You can also use our official Docker images.

If you need assistance with your server, we can help under a support contract.