Review Board 1.0 Release Notes¶

Repository Support¶

Out of the box, Review Board supports Bazaar, ClearCase, CVS, Git, Mercurial, Perforce, and Subversion. Any number of different repositories can be configured with Review Board.

Wide Server Compatibility¶

Review Board works with MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite databases, and lighttpd or Apache web servers, on Windows or Linux.

Scalable¶

Review Board has been tested in large installs with thousands of users using it every day. While it performs well with that load on a standard server box, it can be scaled across many servers to meet increased demand.

Easy Install¶

In most modern Linux distributions, Review Board itself can be installed with only a couple of command line parameters. Review Board sites, including web server configuration, are created through a simple wizard or command-line tool.

Note that some functionality, such as Perforce integration, requires installing additional components.

Powerful Diff Viewer¶

Our diff viewer displays the original and modified files side-by-side, showing not only the differences between the two files but the differences between modified lines when only part of the lines had changed. This makes reviewing code with variable name changes or string changes quick and easy.

Comments on changes can be made right from the diff viewer. Click a line, or click and drag across multiple lines to write a comment. Later, after the review is finished, all comments will be shown along with the accompanying lines of code.

Code is displayed with syntax highlighting, improving readability. A wide variety of file types are supported.

Interdiffs¶

The diff viewer can display the changes between two different revisions of a diff. This means that if someone uploads a large change for review, then makes some changes and uploads the new changes, it’s easy to see what actually changed.

Interdiffs can be commented on just like normal diffs as well.

Screenshot Commenting¶

Screenshots can be uploaded for review, just as diffs can. Reviewers can comment on regions of a screenshot and those comments will appear next to the commented area in the review.

Review History¶

Every review request contains a complete history of all reviews made (including the code or parts of screenshots reviewed), and all changes made to the review request itself (such as new diffs or screenshots added).

Customizable Dashboard¶

The Dashboard allows users to see at a glance any review requests available to review. It supports filtering by group, two-level sorting, and allows customizing the displayed columns. The dashboard will tell you if updates have been made to a review since you last saw it, if you have reviewed a particular review request, or if reviewers have deemed your code ready to ship.

Fast Searching¶

When used with PyLucene, Review Board supports searching through all review requests to quickly find the one you want.

Administration UI¶

Our administration UI provides full access to the entire database, settings, and even news updates for the product.

Web API¶

Third party applications can integrate with Review Board through our XML/JSON APIs. Most of Review Board’s functionality is provided through this API, making it possible to look up review requests, create them, modify, review, or close through any application. In the future we hope this will lead to tight integration with IDEs.

Command Line Tools¶

Command line tools are available for quickly posting or updating review requests from changes made to a local source tree. This allows for rapid development and review request cycles.

New Features¶

• The logo and the version number are now shown next to the “Review Board” text on all pages.

• Added the /api/json/info/ API path to display server info, including the version.

Bugs Fixed¶

• Under times of heavy server load, it was possible to get duplicate draft Review objects in the database. This was less frequent with RC3, but could still happen. We now handle this gracefully and consolidate those duplicate Review objects instead of erroring out, which would require an administrator to fix the problem.

• Fixed a regression with our CVS support on Windows. We weren’t properly finding cvs.exe in the path. (Bug #1174)

• Fixed a style issue with the “Ship It” indicators in IE, Safari 3/4 and Chrome. Patch by Eduardo Felipe Castegnaro for the Safari/Chrome fix.

• Changed the text when attempting to publish a review request without any reviewers to be slightly more clear in that either a person or a group is required. Patch by Helder Ribeiro.