Features For Phoronix Test Suite 1.2

Malvik also introduces a new installation management system. Previously the system for managing which tests were installed was quite simple. This system was only able to tell whether or not a test was installed and whether or not the installation was up to date. Now with Phoronix Test Suite 1.2 the capabilities have been greatly improved. The Phoronix Test Suite is now not only able to tell the user if the test is installed or if it's up to date, but also the number of times the test has been run, when the test was installed, and when the test was last executed. To see some of this information, run the command phoronix-test-suite list-test-usage. Other meta information will be added to the tests as well.

The graphing support in Phoronix Test Suite 1.2 has also been improved. The lines on the line graphs should be thicker, improved plotting, and there should be improved text placement on all types of graphs. In addition, there are a number of fundamental improvements to pts_Graph for being able to detect and automatically resize the drawing buffer, if needed. If the user enters a long string of text for one of the test identifiers, rather than resizing the font to something that is unbearably small, pts_Graph will now increase the height of the graph (thereby providing more room for the text) and then will rotate it 90 degrees so that it's written in a vertical path.

Phoronix Test Suite 1.2 "Malvik" also introduces support for new operating systems. The areas of focus with this expanded OS support has been for *BSD and OpenSolaris. With the OpenSolaris support, the Phoronix Test Suite has been tested against OpenSolaris 2008.05 and an early version of OpenSolaris 2008.11. The Phoronix Test Suite core is largely now compatible with OpenSolaris along with many of the test profiles, but some tests that depend upon Linux binaries may not be compatible. PTS External Dependencies also supports using the OpenSolaris IPS (Image Packaging System). The FreeBSD support isn't quite as nice as the level of Linux or OpenSolaris support, but all basic functionality has been tested with FreeBSD 7.0.