Phoronix Test Suite 1.6.0 "Tydal" Alpha 2

The second development release in the road to Phoronix Test Suite 1.6.0 "Tydal" is now available. This release brings a number of new user features, pts-core improvements, and bug fixes. Below are some of the key features introduced in Phoronix Test Suite 1.6.0 Alpha 2.

- The Phoronix Test Suite can now detect the desktop environment (GNOME, KDE, and Xfce currently) in use and it will report that to the system software area.

- An analyze-all-runs option has been added that will generate a candlestick chart showing any differences between test runs. With Phoronix Test Suite 1.6+, the results from all test runs are archived within the XML results file. Running analyze-all-runs on a test result file will visually indicate if there was much variation between tests that had run multiple times.

- Our image renderer that's capable of rendering the graph results to SVG files and PNG files using the GD library has received numerous improvements. The renderer has also been moved out of the pts_Graph object and into its own class (called "bilde_renderer").

- The results viewer has had its XSL and CSS updated that fixes a few alignment issues and should improve the formatting.

- A build-suite command has been added to the Phoronix Test Suite that allows users to easily build their own test suite. This command will walk you through the process of choosing from the available tests to use, the options that come with each test to configure, etc. The user-created suite will then be saved to ~/.phoronix-test-suite/test-suites/ and can be immediately used.

- There is a major update to the Self-Contained Test Profiles (SCTP) support in this update, but that work isn't yet completed. A convert-test-to-sctp command has also been added.

- Along with various bug fixes and addressing a few regressions, the rest of the work in Phoronix Test Suite 1.6.0 Alpha 2 is made up of random changes -- a download-test-files option being added, improved XML parsing performance through tandem_XmlReader optimizations, the pts_CandleStickGraph object being added, etc.

Phoronix Test Suite 1.6.0 Alpha 2 can be downloaded @ http://phoronix-test-suite.com/?k=downloads

Below is the full change-log between Tydal Alpha 1 and Alpha 2.


Phoronix Test Suite 1.6.0 Alpha 2
December 2, 2008

- pts-core: Fix for Self-Contained Test Profiles (SCTP) support
- pts-core: Fix in memory type detection
- pts-core: Improve usability for those without the PHP preg_* functions
- pts-core: When rendering graph results, report the PTS version number from the results file, not current PTS_VERSION
- pts-core: Add support for detecting and reporting the desktop environment / version in use
- pts-core: Add support for dynamically loading objects from sub-directories of pts-core/objects/
- pts-core: Add validate-result mode that PTS test profiles can implement
- pts-core: Fix reporting erroneous motherboard string (Found on QEMU virtualized system)
- pts-core: Add and implement RawString to XML results specification for storing raw result values from all trial runs
- pts-core: Rename analyze option to analyze-batch
- pts-core: Add analyze-all-runs option to generate a candlestick graph showing the distribution of results from all trial runs
- pts-core: Update phoronix-test-suite text
- pts-core: Rework the pts_run_option interface to set options to run next
- pts-core: Change benchmark option to using the revised pts_run_option interface to avoid double pts-core initialization
- pts-core: Eliminate use of SILENT_INSTALL environmental variable
- pts-core: Ensure all PTS options extend the pts_option_interface
- pts-core: Allow pts_Graph to set the default image renderer for blide_renderer
- pts-core: Adjust some tag locations within the user-config.xml (NOTE: USERS MAY NEED TO UPDATE THEIR SETTINGS)
- pts-core: Fix regression in hw_gpu_xrandr_available_modes()
- pts-core: Fix regression in list-all-tests not listing unsupported tests
- pts-core: Remove DownloadSize tag that was deprecated from the test profiles since PTS 1.4 since it's been replaced in the downloads.xml specification
- pts-core: Update CSS and XSL for results viewer, fix table column alignment bug
- pts-core: Fix recent regression in pts_download_test_files() that caused only the first file to be downloaded
- pts-core: Remove old un-used files and installed files prior to installing/reinstalling a test
- pts-core: Add download-test-files option to download files for a test/suite but don't install
- pts-core: Add build-suite option that guides the user through automatically building their own test suite
- pts-core: Clean up / functionize more benchmark run code
- pts-core: Major Self-Contained Test Profile (SCTP) update. Also adds in convert-test-to-sctp option.
- pts: Add adjustable file size support for bonnie test profile
- pts: Update sqlite test profile to version 3.6.6.2
- pts: Update iozone test profile to version 3.315 and add size user option
- pts: Update openarena test profile to use OpenArena 0.8.1 game and new demo file
- tandem_XmlReader: Major performance improvements and optimizations
- bilde_renderer: New PTS-spawned abstracted image rendering interface that supports SVG and PNG rendering with a standard API
- pts_Graph: Various changes to the graphing object
- pts_Graph: Switch from internal image rendering functions to using bilde_renderer
- pts_Graph: Add loadGraphRawValues() for storing raw result data from RawString
- pts_CandleStickGraph: A new graph type that displays results from all test runs and is modeled after Japanese Candlestick charting