Phoronix Test Suite 2.6 "Lyngen" Alpha 1

It's been just a month since releasing Phoronix Test Suite 2.4 and that was followed by the release of our PTS Desktop Live 2010.1 operating system, but since then work has been flowing into the next release of the Phoronix Test Suite and related benchmarking technologies. The next release, Phoronix Test Suite 2.6, is codenamed Lyngen and will be officially available in May. Today the first alpha release for Phoronix Test Suite 2.6 is available.

Lyngen is building upon the feature-rich Phoronix Test Suite 2.4 release that was known as Lenvik and there is already a 7,000 line patch that separates the two. Most of the Phoronix Test Suite 2.6 features have yet to be introduced, but most of the churn so far has been underlying alterations to our automated testing framework and engine known as pts-core. The underlying work is in preparation for handling some of the massive changes that will be invested into Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 later this year, various code clean-ups, and there is also changes that get us closer to our working Phoronix Test Suite support for Windows. This though is just the tip of the iceberg for Phoronix Test Suite 2.6 work.

This first alpha release also carries many changes to the Phoromatic module that brings new features to the Phoronix Test Suite client, Phoromatic servers, and Phoromatic Trackers like our daily kernel performance benchmarks reference implementation. Among the new features is Phoromatic being able to turn off or reboot the test systems (such as when testing is completed for the day), connectivity enhancements, estimated time completion for tests being exposed on the Phoromatic server, and support for new triggers. For those unfamiliar with Phoromatic it is one of our commercial services that allows individuals or organizations to build a benchmarking test farm in a very easy and highly automated manner. Or you could just use it to benchmark systems across the world.

There are also various updated test profiles in Phoronix Test Suite 2.6 Alpha 1, such as for OpenArena 0.8.5 and there is also a brand new, just-committed update to the X-Plane 9 flight simulator test profile thanks to our collaboration with Laminar Research. For test profile writers, there is also a brand new XML interface for very easily extracting test results from log files or other outputs. Most of the 131 test profiles have already been converted to using this new interface, which will be the preferred means of results parsing as we go forward, while the remaining test profiles will be updated throughout the Lyngen development cycle (there's still a few additions that are needed to complete the interface). The existing test results parsing method that has served us well since Phoronix Test Suite v0.0.2 will be dropped completely in a forthcoming release. The new method is faster, requires less system memory, is platform agnostic (read: 100% Windows compatibility), and overall is a much better design.

Those interested in trying out the latest development (or stable) release of the Phoronix Test Suite can do so at Phoronix-Test-Suite.com. Below is the official change-log for Phoronix Test Suite 2.6 Alpha 1. A second alpha release will be available later this month while the official release of Phoronix Test Suite 2.6.0 will be here in May.

Phoronix Test Suite 2.6 Alpha 1
March 9, 2010

- pts-core: No longer statically code define statements for XML parsing, move into pts-core/definitions XML statements
- pts-core: Add EST_TIME_REMAINING variable assignment that has the estimated run-time remaining during testing
- pts-core: Add RequiresCoreVersion tag to XML test suite specification similar to the test profile implementation
- pts-core: Don't run graphics tests if the driver configuration is known to not support 3D acceleration at all
- pts-core: Temporarily drop support for PTS weighted suites until it is rearchitected
- pts-core: Add new interface (parse-results.xml) for handling results parsing of tests using an XML file with a result template
- pts-core: Add ProfileVersion tag to XML result file specification
- pts-core: Add some of the Phoromatic Tracker helper scripts
- phodevi: Add support for detecting Reiser4 file-system via its super magic block
- phodevi: Report hard drive manufacturer when detected and prepend to the model string
- phodevi: Add initial audio / sound card detection support
- phoromatic: Add support for powering off the system if told to do so by the Phoromatic server
- phoromatic: Add support for restarting the system if told to do so by the Phoromatic server
- phoromatic: Wait an additional 90 seconds on connectivity problems
- phoromatic: Report estimated time remaining to test completion to Phoromatic server
- phoromatic: Add client support for the Phoromatic trigger interface
- phoromatic: Support for reading the Phoromatic server build/version
- bilde_renderer: Fix the SVG renderer back-end from battling multiple graph style values contained in a single page
- pts_Graph: Line graphing improvements for Phoromatic Tracker
- pts-core: Various fixes and improvements
- pts: Add adjustable record / block size to iozone test profile
- pts: Remove dead download links
- pts: Update openarena test profile against OpenArena 0.8.5 patch
- pts: Update xplane9 test profile against XPlane 9.45 timedemo