automation

RBTools 1.0 is here!

Christian Hammond

RBTools has been an important part of the life of Review Board users for many years. While it started off as a single tool for posting review requests, its feature set has evolved with time, turning into an extensible set of tools and APIs for talking to Review Board.

Today, we’re finally pulling RBTools out of the 0.x era with the release of RBTools 1.0.

Compatible with Python 3

Both the RBTools commands and the Python API now support Python 2.7 and 3.5+.

(Please let us know if you hit any issues on Python 3, as this is still pretty new.)

Better Repository Detection and Git Support

RBTools now does a better job determining which repository it’s working with, in case there’s confusion. For example, a Mercurial repository nested in a Git-managed home directory will no longer cause problems.

Git repositories in particular are now easier to work with. When generating a diff, RBTools now looks for the nearest upstream parent commit or branch, instead of requiring that users or repositories configure a specific tracking branch.

Publish Automated Reviews

Writing your own automated review solutions for Review Board 3.0 or RBCommons just became easier through the new rbt status-update command. Your scripts can use it to file a pending status update on a review request (showing that checks are being performed) and then update it to say that all is well or to report issues that need to be fixed.

This is useful for in-house continuous integration setups where you’re analyzing code for errors, style issues, documentation, or any other requirements you might have.

Easily Land Complex Dependent Changes

rbt land can now land multiple review requests tied together using the Depends On field.

This works with -r to take the ID of the review request you want to land. It will figure out which review requests must land before it and in which order. For example, if review request 3 depends on 2, which depends on 1, you can run:

$ rbt land --recursive -r 3

Instead of:

$ rbt land -r 1
$ rbt land -r 2
$ rbt land -r 3

This is a precursor to the new DVCS support coming soon in Review Board 4.0.

And That’s Not All

  • rbt setup-completion was added to enable auto-completion of RBTools commands and arguments in Bash and ZSH shells.

  • rbt alias was added to help you list and test out your custom aliases.

  • rbt post –submit-as can now automate posting review request updates, and not just new review requests, on a user’s behalf.

  • rbt post -m and rbt publish -m let you specify a custom description of your draft’s changes when publishing (equivalent to filling out the “Describe your changes” box when publishing in the browser).

  • rbt post –trivial-publish and rbt publish –trivial let you publish trivial updates to a review request without sending out e-mails to everyone (when using Review Board 3.0 or RBCommons).

  • rbt status now lists the review state and local branch for each review request you have up for review.

  • Warnings and errors in command output is now specially highlighted to help it stand out.

  • Several fixes and improvements for Git and Subversion compatibility.

  • The API has been improved, supporting extra_data fields and easier pagination of resources.

And plenty of other fixes and improvements. See the release notes for the full list of changes in 1.0.

Download It Today!

RBTools is out today for Windows, Linux, and Mac. Head on over to the downloads page for installation instructions.

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Auto-closing review requests when pushing changes

Christian Hammond

We’ve launched a new feature today for simplifying your code review workflow.

If you’re using GitHub, Bitbucket, or Google Code, RBCommons can now automatically close your review requests when you push your commits to your repository, making use of the service’s “post-commit” hooks. You’ll no longer need to click Close -> Submitted, saving time and keeping your dashboard clean.

 

Usage is simple

Once you’re set up (and we’ll go into that in a minute), all you need to do is include the following in your commit message:

Reviewed at https://rbcommons.com/s/<your-team>/r/<id>/

Or:

Review Request #<id>

Just commit, and your review request will be automatically closed, along with a message containing the commit revision and which branch it was committed to.

 

Setting this up

Setup depends on which service you’re using for your repositories, but we’ve worked to make it pretty simple.

We’ve added some new buttons to your Team Administration -> Repositories page. You’ll see a “Hooks” button next to any supported repository. Click that, and you’ll see instructions on turning this feature on for your repository. In just seconds, your repository will be set up!

This feature is still new, but has been undergoing testing for several weeks. If you hit any snags, let us know and we’ll help get you going.

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Announcing new abilities for team administrators

Christian Hammond

Nobody likes a cluttered dashboard. It makes it harder to see what’s left to review in a day, and can have an impact on how often people check for what needs a review.

Sometimes this happens because someone has left the company. Sometimes people forget.

One of the most frequent requests we’ve had is to give team administrators a way to manage the mess. Today, we’re happy to announce that this feature has finally arrived.

Team administrators now have the ability to modify, close or reopen any review request on their team. You can also leave a message in the close description saying, for example, that the original owner left the company, or that the change was committed to a certain branch.

When posting through RBTools, you’ll also be able to post changes on behalf of another user, by passing the --submit-as=<username> flag to rbt post (or post-review, if you’re still using that). This is very useful if you’re looking to automate creating review requests.

In the future, we plan to make it possible to grant these abilities to other members of your team without giving full administrator rights.

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