Month: August 2025

Attach, comment on, and review any file with Review Board

Christian Hammond

Projects are more than just source code. They’re screenshots, they’re art, documentation, log files, datasets, audio files, video, 3D models.

Review Board has long supported attaching any kind of file to a review request for review. No limitations on file types.

It’s easy! Want to review a file? Just drag-and-drop it onto a review request, and it’s there.

Want to include a screenshot or a mockup when discussing a change? Drag-and-drop it onto a comment field (or click the Upload button).

Got an update to a screenshot, or a document maybe? Just update the attachment with a new one. Each version is tracked, and can even be diffed!

But you can do more

View Markdown files, as source code or a hybrid source/rendered mode.

A Markdown document in hybrid rendered/source mode, showing the contents on a line-by-line basis like the source code but rendered as Markdown content. The title is "Housekeeping for Python," and it describes the Housekeeping Pyton package.

Read through documents in PDF format.

A PDF file titled "Why Otters Are Great," rendered in Review Board with a sidebar showing thumbnails of all the pages, a revision slider for seeing older versions and diffing between them, and additional controls for navigation and zooming. Why title shows a comment has been made on it.

Images, text-based files, and PDF documents can all be diffed, seeing how they’ve changed between uploads. Just like interdiffs for source code!

Two revisions of the image uploaded in the video demos above, pink and blue versions of "Bloopy," diffed with a Split View letting people move a slider to see segments of the image side-by-side.

Yes, that includes PDF documents. Documentation, presentations, and anything else that exports to PDF can be diffed right in Review Board. They’re rendered as normal, but with the changes highlighted for you.

A side-by-side view of two revisions of a presentation, fully rendered, with highlighting showing the changes in the text content.

Binary files that can’t be viewed directly in Review Board can be downloaded to your system and inspected there. Once you’ve finished looking it over, leave a comment on the file to include it in your review.

What files can be reviewed?

You can review anything with Review Board.

Review Board will render the following files (and their diffs!):

  • Any source code (such as .c, .css, .html, .js, .py, .rb, .sh, or anything else text-based)
  • Markdown files (.md), showing both source code and rendered views
  • Datasets and logs (such as .json, .log)
  • Any other text-based files (.diff, .txt, .xml, anything)
  • Images (.png, .gif, .jpg, .bmp, and more)
  • PDF documents (.pdf), and soon Office document types (requires a license to Power Pack)

And you can include any other types of binary files for download and commenting, such as:

  • Audio files (.mp3, .wav, .ogg, .flac)
  • Video files (.mpg, .mkv, .mov)
  • 3D models (.blend, .stl, .obj, .fbx, and more)
  • Any other kind of binary formats (.sqlite, .uasset, .zip, .exe)

If it’s a file, you can upload it to Review Board and comment on it, review it, include it in discussions.

Just one of the ways you can use Review Board to level up your code review and build better products.

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