Review Board 4.0 Beta 2 Release Notes¶

Release date: January 20, 2021

Please see the 4.0 beta 1 release notes for general upgrade notes for the 4.0 beta series.

These release notes show changes since beta 1.

Installation¶

To install this release, run the following:

$ sudo pip install \
    --trusted-host downloads.reviewboard.org \
    -f http://downloads.reviewboard.org/releases/ReviewBoard/4.0/ \
    -f http://downloads.reviewboard.org/releases/rbintegrations/2.0/ \
    --pre -U ReviewBoard

Or:

$ sudo easy_install \
    -f http://downloads.reviewboard.org/releases/ReviewBoard/4.0/ \
    -f http://downloads.reviewboard.org/releases/rbintegrations/2.0/ \
    -U ReviewBoard

Note

If this is a new install, please use pip, as support for easy_install is going away.

Warning

We do not recommend upgrading a production server with this version of Review Board. It’s best to install on a test server, with a copy of your production database, in case there are any major problems.

Packaging¶

django-haystack 2.x (2.8.1 or higher) is required.
elasticsearch 2.x (2.4.1 or higher) is required.
Optional LDAP/Active Directory support now requires python-ldap 3.x (3.3.1 or higher).

The correct version can be installed by installing the ReviewBoard[ldap] package.
Review Board packages can now be built using modern versions of Node.JS.
DNS is no longer a supported or required library.

Older servers may have this installed. If so, it’s best to uninstall it, and then force a re-install of dnspython (which is normally automatically installed).

New Features¶

rb-site¶

This command received a large number of useful updates and fixes in this release, aimed to help with routine tasks and automated installs. Highlights include:

Help output for rb-site and all subcommands has been greatly improved.

This includes a list of common management commands when running rb-site manage --help.
Added a rb-site install --secret-key option to specify the value for the stored SECRET_KEY.

If you’re automating the deployment of Review Board instances that all talk to the same database, you can use this to ensure that they all use the same key. This is very important, as Review Board expects this value not to change between servers.
Added a rb-site install --settings-local-template option for specifying a custom template for settings_local.py.

This is also useful for automating installs when you have customizations for your conf/settings_local.py file in your site directory. The help output for this option will show the default template being used, which you can copy for your customizations.
rb-site manage commands no longer need a special -- argument before the command’s arguments.

Administration UI¶

Added an improved Repositories widget in the administration dashboard.

The new widget improves upon the old one by showing up to 8 repositories, listing the repository type and the hosting service (if any), presented in a way compatible with desktop and mobile devices.

Usability Improvements¶

File attachment thumbnails are now shown on page load.

In previous releases, they’d appear after the page has loaded, causing the page to jump. We now show them all up-front, faded out until they load.

Bug Fixes¶

Review Requests¶

Fixed a long-standing display issue with the Reviews and Diffs tabs on Firefox.

These tabs had a thin line separating the tabs from the rest of the review request, which wasn’t present on other browsers.

Search¶

Fixed configuring and switching search backends.

Authentication¶

Fixed regressions in 4.0 beta 1 with the LDAP and Active Directory backends.

Clear Case¶

Fixed a regression in 4.0 beta 1 causing Clear Case support to fail to load.

rb-site¶

Fixed a regression in 4.0 beta 1 with creating a new site using Postgres databases on Python 3.
Fixed upgrading between two versions of Review Board when only the version number changes.
Fixed running the resolve-check management command.
New databases no longer require manually running the resolve-check command for static-media.
Removed warnings shown from third-party modules when on Python 2.7.

Administration UI¶

Fixed sending a test e-mail in the E-mail Settings page.
Removed unwanted extra Save buttons in forms.

Contributors¶

Christian Hammond