Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 Enters Alpha

Creating Phodevi provides a few technical advantages that will become clear in the future and some points already like quicker hardware detection. Phodevi could even be used outside of the Phoronix Test Suite for those looking to provide a generic interface for accessing this different information in a generic method no matter the hardware or operating system. With most of the platform-specific code being housed within Phodevi, porting the Phoronix Test Suite to run on new operating systems will be easier with this code now being more centralized. With new operating system support, Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 with Phodevi now supports the NexentaCore operating system with its mix of the OpenSolaris kernel and a GNU (Ubuntu) user-land.

For those interested in what the Phoronix Test Suite now looks like with the addition of Phodevi, above is a simplified (and quickly made) block diagram that illustrates the technical layout of the 2.0 "Sandtorg" architecture. For those unfamiliar with the Phoronix Test Suite code-base, tandem_Xml is our library for reading/writing XML, pts_Graph is our graphing component for generating line and bar graphs along with other formats, and bilde_renderer is another PTS-spawned library for providing a generic drawing API that in turn has renderers to target different image formats. Bilde_renderer currently ships with support for rendering to JPG, PNG, GIF, SVG, and Adobe SWF formats. One change with bilde_renderer for Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 is that it now no longer ships with its own TrueType Font file for the GD-based renderers but instead will attempt to detect a supported TTF font file already on the system.

Besides all of this new work to be found in Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 just a month into its official development, there are also various bug fixes to be found in the Alpha 1 release. New run-time options added to the Phoronix Test Suite include list-installed-suites, list-unsupported-tests, and finish-run for completing tests that were previously incomplete within a saved results file.

For those interested in downloading the Phoronix Test Suite the latest stable and development releases are available from Phoronix-Test-Suite.com. At this time there is no build of PTS Linux Live available for the lack of hosting mirrors. Those interested in helping out with the Phoronix Test Suite or would like to provide feedback can do so on the Phoronix Forums or the mailing list.

Much more of exciting work and features will be introduced in Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 as its development continues.