An extensible and friendly code review tool for projects and companies of all sizes.
MIT License
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Published by chipx86 4 months ago
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
Published by chipx86 12 months ago
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.
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.
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.
Published by chipx86 about 1 year ago
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.
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!
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:
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.
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.
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:
If a file attachment is pending deletion, you can now restore it by clicking Undo Delete in the file attachment’s actions menu.
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.
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.
/health/
) for monitoring, scaling, and fault toleranceThe Review Board 6 release notes cover all the changes in this release in detail.
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.
Published by chipx86 about 1 year ago
Beta 3 is here, with a more polished Review Board look and feel, a toolbar to help format your Markdown text and attach images, a better experience for the new Review Banner, and numerous fixes and improvements throughout the product.
If you're discovering 6.0 for the first time, look at our announcements for 6.0 beta 1 and 6.0 beta 2 to learn about the new features, like the Review Banner, improved diff navigation, and all the new extension capabilities that can help tailor Review Board for your team.
We’ve refined Review Board’s look, making small adjustments throughout the product to help it feel lighter, with easier-to-read diffs and more apparent controls.
This is the beginnings of a larger effort that we’ll be continuing through Review Board 7 to help modernize the UI and give users more control over how Review Board looks on their system.
We’ve made it easier to work with Markdown text anywhere you see a text field. The new Markdown formatting toolbar helps you format your reviews, comments, and review requests using Markdown.
Toggle between bold, italic, strike-through, and code literals
. Create lists, link to URLs, and then go beyond text by uploading and embedding images.
We’ve added useful tips and tricks for helping compose your reviews, right at the top of the Review Dialog.
In addition, the new Review Banner is now available any time you see a review request, regardless of whether it’s in draft form, published, or closed. You can also publish all reviews and review requests with one click.
See the release notes for the full list of changes and installation/upgrade instructions.
Next release will be RC1, our release candidate. We’d love to get some more testing, and have a handy Docker image you can try to get started. Your feedback will help us make 6.0 a rock-solid release.
Published by chipx86 over 1 year ago
Review Board 5.0.5 offers improvements and fixes to Single Sign-On, web-based login for the upcoming RBTools 5, improved support for installing with Python Virtual Environments (required in this year's Linux distributions), and more.
Let's dig in.
We've fixed a handful of bugs in the Review Board 5's new Single Sign-On support, improving compatibility with most services.
Now, if a page requires you to log in first, you'll be taken back to that page once successfully logged in. Thanks to everyone who let us know this wasn't working right.
RBTools 5 is in development, and includes the ability to log in using the Review Board website. This means you can finally use your standard Single Sign-On authentication for RBTools.
We're hard at work on RBTools 5, and will be shipping it later this year. If you'd like to beta test this, please reach out to support for pre-release builds.
Python Virtual Environments provide a way to isolate Python applications and services from the system or other Python applications. They help you avoid various forms of installation problems, and they're required in Ubuntu 23.04, Debian Bookworm, and Fedora 39 (with other Linux distros soon to follow).
Starting in 5.0.5, Review Board can now help you install into a Virtual Environment and will automatically make use of it no matter what web server you're using.
We've updated our installation documentation to help you install and use Review Board in either Virtual Environments or in traditional setups.
Please note: If you're not using a Virtual Environment today, you don't need to switch to one unless you're planning to upgrade to this year's Linux distributions.
python
and pip
site management commands for running the correct versions for your environment.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.
Published by chipx86 over 1 year ago
We’re excited to announce the first beta of Review Board 6! This is a smaller release focusing on improvements to the review workflow by giving you a new starting point for creating reviews and the ability to bulk-publish drafts of reviews, replies, and review requests.
If you’re new to Review Board, it’s a free, open source, extensible web-based code review and document review tool, helping developers work together to ensure quality code on their projects, whether using Git, Mercurial, Perforce, Subversion, ClearCase, or other current or future source code management tools.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the key changes in this beta.
Since the beginning, Review Board has represented drafts of new reviews, replies, or review request changes as a green draft banner at the top of the screen. Each draft had its own banner, and each draft had to be published separately.
We’re now introducing a new unified banner, which shows everything you have in flight on a review request.
From here, you can:
The banner is always present on a review request. You can use the Review menu to create a brand-new blank review, file a general comment, or quickly file a Ship It! review:
There’s more coming. In beta 2, the new banner will show you your active file in a diff and let you jump to other files.
Learn more about the new review banner.
We’re opening this up to extension authors. Soon, extensions will be able to add new information and sections to the banner, giving your organization more control over your review workflow.
Extension authors also have a few new goodies in this release:
index.ts
file in your JavaScript bundle, and use that to write any TypeScript code or import from TypeScript modules.We’ll have documentation on all this before the final 6.0 is released.
See the 6.0 beta 1 release notes for the full list of changes.
We’d love to have your help! We have installation information in the release notes.
Please make sure you have a dedicated testing server and database. Do not test this beta in production!
You can use the beanbag/reviewboard:6.0b1 Docker image as well. See our Docker instructions for information on setting up an environment.
Published by chipx86 over 1 year ago
Review Board 5.0.4 is a bug fix release, focusing on improving compatibility throughout the product, addressing problems with Single Sign-On, and making critical changes to the API.
Review Board 5.0.3 auto-generated new configurations for more web servers when first installing a site, but it was missing the new templates for Apache installs.
Review Board 5.0.4 now generates much-improved Apache configurations with wide Apache support. These new configurations help with setting up SSL and configuring mod_wsgi
for different modes.
We've fixed compatibility for a few services we integrate with, including:
Review Bot 3.x, our automated code review add-on for Review Board
Single Sign-On providers
If you're using any of these, you'll want to upgrade to 5.0.4.
We introduced the following APIs in Review Board 5.0:
Due to a conflict between the names used for linking to these resources and names used for other resources in our URI templates at the top-level of our API, we've needed to rename these links. If you are using these new APIs, please see the release notes for the new names.
We try hard not to break the API, but this was the less intrusive option.
This also fixes a compatibility problem with the rbt review command.
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.
We're releasing Review Board 6 beta 1 very soon! 6.0 will be a smaller release focused on a few improvements in the review process.
The beta will be public to everybody, but if you're interested in beta testing, we'd love to hear from you!
Published by chipx86 over 1 year ago
Today’s new releases fix a (rare) security issue when using older insecure LDAP servers. There are also installation improvements and a handful of bug fixes.
A security bug was found that enables a user to log in as another user when LDAP is configured. This vulnerability only exists when:
Under these conditions, a combination of an invalid LDAP username and a non-empty password can result in LDAP claiming the credentials are valid. If that user exists in Review Board as a local user, Review Board will see that the login was “successful” in LDAP and log the user in.
Most users should never hit this issue. So far it’s only been found in an old version of Active Directory, and only when using our “LDAP” backend instead of the recommended “Active Directory.”
We've tightened the code path and added additional checks to safeguard this on our end. All of today’s releases include the fix.
If you use LDAP, we recommend upgrading to this release, ensuring your LDAP servers are up-to-date, and disabling anonymous binds if you don't need them.
Review Board works well with just about any modern web server, but we’ve only ever provided sample configurations for Apache.
Now, when installing a new site, sample configurations are auto-generated for these often-requested web servers:
See our Web Server documentation for these sample configuration files and additional instructions.
We’ve stomped out several bugs in this release, including:
We’ve also reworked much of our documentation. Some highlights include:
For the full list of changes, see:
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.
Published by chipx86 over 1 year ago
Review Board 5.0.2 adds new time-based expiration controls for API tokens, improves your control over Trojan Source detection, adds new API features, and fixes several bugs.
In Review Board 5.0, we introduced new, stronger API tokens that could expire and be validated through automated tools.
Tokens can now be set to expire at a specific time. This is useful when creating short-lived tokens or ones that need to expire at, say, midnight on a given date.
The expiration dates/times for existing tokens can also be changed after token creation. They can even be set in the past to force a token to be expired.
Review Board 5 brought the ability to scan uploaded diffs for possible Trojan Source attacks. Since these are based on Unicode characters from a variety of languages, they can result in false-positives when working with character sets such as Cyrillic or Greek.
Now, Trojan Source detection can be toggled off entirely in Admin UI -> Diff Viewer Settings. Or you can leave it on and mark some character sets as safe.
URI templates provide quick and easy access to various API resources, allowing a client to determine the appropriate URL simply by accessing the root resource and looking up the desired template name.
In Review Board 5, we had some new resources that conflicted with other ones. This may have impacted some in-house integrations or when using the RBTools API.
We’ve now fixed this to use the original names. The conflicting URI template names have been deprecated, and we’ve introduced a whole new set of future-proofed URI template names.
If you're a developer using our API, please see the full list of new, existing, and deprecated URI templates.
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.