Phoronix Test Suite 8.0 Debuts With Official Windows Support, Easier Benchmark Creation

Phoronix Test Suite 8.0 has premiered today as the latest quarterly update to our open-source, cross-platform automated benchmarking software. This also happens to be our largest release ever and also commemorates ten years since the release of Phoronix Test Suite 1.0 and fourteen-years since the start of Phoronix. Here is a look at some of the many enhancements to find in this open-source benchmarking software.

The headlining feature of Phoronix Test Suite 8.0 is rewritten Windows support targeting Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 that also promotes the Windows platform to being officially supported alongside Linux, BSD, and macOS. Windows support has existed in the Phoronix Test Suite going back to Windows 7, but had been only maintained in passing and with a limited test selection. With Phoronix Test Suite 8.0 this was overhauled with major IHVs now making use of the Phoronix Test Suite on Windows to complement their Linux hardware/software testing. There are dozens of test profiles working natively under Windows now with the Phoronix Test Suite while Cygwin is used just as a bash interpreter for allows cross-compatibility with some of the scripts and providing Tar and other common utilities. The Windows support will continue to be further improved moving forward. Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 x64 are currently the official supported targets, but most functionality should work going back to Windows 8 and some elements of Windows Server 2012.

Phoronix Test Suite 8.0 also features various BSD operating system improvements with a bulk of that additional testing and verification being on FreeBSD and TrueOS as well as DragonFlyBSD. There is better external dependency handling, various hardware/software detection improvements, and more test profiles being compatible with the BSD target.

The macOS support has also seen minor improvements in its support, including optional handling when the Brew macOS package management system is present on the system for obtaining additional test dependencies for allowing more test profiles to run under macOS. Rounding out the operating system support improvements is also initial support for Termux external dependencies, via an independent contribution to the Phoronix Test Suite, in aiming towards making this benchmarking software compatible with Android.

There are also several new commands to the Phoronix Test Suite client. The phoronix-test-suite create-test-profile sub-command now allows a CLI-driven process of prompts for creating a test profile and getting the XML meta-data template in place. This is complemented by a web-based test profile creation page now available via the Phoromatic Server web interface. More details on those additions here.

As part of the new test profile creation functionality, there is also the phoronix-test-suite inspect-test-profile sub-command to better understand the behavior of existing test profiles. Another addition is phoronix-test-suite openbenchmarking-uploads to see OpenBenchmarking.org IDs of results recently uploaded from your IP address.

Rounding things out in making the Phoronix Test Suite easier to new users is the phoronix-test-suite shell that offers a basic and guided interactive shell for utilizing various phoronix-test-suite sub-commands in a friendly manner.

Beyond the test profile creation support from the Phoromatic Server web interface, there is also improved search result functionality, better handling when Internet connection support is disabled or unexpectedly disconnected, and dozens of minor enhancements.

Another new addition to the Phoronix Test Suite client is a back-up module for the easy and automated backing up of all Phoronix Test Suite / Phoromatic assets on the system from Phoromatic server data to the test download cache to the result file. This functionality is accessible via the phoronix-test-suite backup.create and phoronix-test-suite backup.restore commands.

The Phodevi (Phoronix Device Interface) now has better hardware detection for SiFive RISC-V hardware, Cavium ThunderX platforms, Spectre Variant 4 reporting, and other hardware/software detection improvements.

Those come down to the key improvements to find with today's Phoronix Test Suite 8.0 stable release. Phoronix Test Suite 8.0 for all supported platforms is available for download from Phoronix-Test-Suite.com and GitHub. Phoronix Test Suite 8.0.1 is expected as a point release later this month with some additional tuning and any accumulated fixes while Phoronix Test Suite 8.2 will be released in the third quarter. Contact us for commercial support and any custom engineering needs around the Phoronix Test Suite and Phoromatic.