RBTools 4.0 Release Notes¶

Release date: October 24, 2022

Compatibility¶

RBTools 4.0 supports Python 3.7 through 3.11.

Support for Python 2.7 and 3.6 have been dropped. For continued support, please use RBTools 3.x.
The RBTools for Windows installer now bundles Python 3.10.

This unfortunately means we have to drop support for Windows 7 and older, as Python has dropped support in their installers.

Added support for Apple Diff on macOS Ventura.

Ventura is the first version of macOS to drop support for GNU Diff. It instead introduces Apple Diff, which is similar to GNU Diff in most (but not all) respects.

RBTools 4 has been updated to detect whether GNU Diff or Apple Diff is installed and to interface with it properly.
Added conflict information when trying to apply Subversion patches using rbt patch or rbt land.
Improved error messages when posting review requests if failing to find a repository match.

Sometimes local tools (such as git, svn, or diff) are missing when posting a change for review, or the local tree doesn’t quite match up with what’s configured on Review Board. Or there may be too many repositories that match the local tree.

RBTools will now report on what types of repositories were tried, what tools may be missing, and what conflicts may have been found, helping you to resolve the problem more quickly.

Improved the performance of diff generation for most SCMs.

Subversion, Perforce, and Team Foundation Server will see the most gains here, especially for larger changes.
Improved startup time and reliability.

We’ve optimized how we load in repository support, reducing the work required when starting up.

If you’re developing custom scripts that use the RBTools Python API, you may need to update your scripts for RBTools 4.

These changes should all be backwards-compatible, but deprecated code will be removed in RBTools 5.

We’ve completely reworked how SCMClients (which interface with services like Git or Perforce) are registered and set up:

SCMClients can be registered or looked up using rbtools.clients.base.registry.scmclient_registry.

This will still include SCMClients provided by Python packages that use Python Entry Points.
Custom SCMClients must now inherit from rbtools.clients.base.scmclient.BaseSCMClient, instead of the legacy rbtools.clients.SCMClient.

This allows base class allows clients to specify dependencies, compatible diff tools (GNU Diff, Apple Diff, or custom diff tools), and go through a formal setup process.
If manually instantiating a SCMClient, setup() must be called.

This checks for missing dependencies and performs some internal client setup.

If not called, certain operations may fail, or emit deprecation warnings.

It’s now easier than ever to create or process diffs using RBTools.

rbtools.diffs.tools provides wrappers and a registry for looking up and calling the correct diff tool for your system.
rbtools.diffs.writers.UnifiedDiffWriter makes it easy to programmatically generate Unified Diff files with the right syntax and encodings.

Tools can now use rbtools.utils.source_tree.scan_scmclients_for_path() to determine which SCMClient and which repository on Review Board is correct for a given path.

This will check client dependencies as well, and return detailed error messages if a match could not be found.

Much of our codebase has been updated to provide Type Annotations, which IDEs can use to ensure the code you write is using the right types.

Much of the API, SCMClients, new diff functionality, and utility functions have been updated with Type Annotations, with more coming in the future.

The following functionality in the RBTools Python API have been deprecated and will be removed in RBTools 5:

rbtools.clients.SCMClient (subclass rbtools.clients.base.scmclient.BaseSCMClient instead).
rbtools.clients.base.repository.RepositoryInfo now expects keyword arguments instead of positional arguments.
BaseSCMClient.diff() now expects keyword arguments, and should not take SCM-specific arguments.

rbtools.utils.checks
- is_valid_version() (compare tuples directly instead).
rbtools.utils.diffs
- filename_match_any_patterns() now expects base_dir as a keyword argument.
- filter_diff() now expects exclude_patterns and base_dir as keyword arguments.
- normalize_patterns() now expects base_dir and cwd as keyword arguments.
- remove_filenames_matching_patterns() now expects base_dir and patterns as keyword arguments.
rbtools.utils.process
- execute() (use run_process() instead).

Fixed a bug where RBTools tried and failed to load custom SSL certificates when only finding a certificate or a key (but not both).

Fixed problems that could occur when applying Mercurial patches using rbt patch or rbt land.

Fixed problems that could occur when applying Subversion patches using rbt patch or rbt land.
Fixed an infinite loop that could theoretically occur when building diffs of empty files.