Phoronix Test Suite 4.4-Forsand Officially Released
It's been two months since the release of Phoronix Test Suite 4.2-Randaberg and now Phoronix Test Suite 4.4-Forsand has been christened as the Q1'2013 major update.
Most notably with Phoronix Test Suite 4.4 is access to many new tests and much-enhanced test installation/run-time error reporting, as detailed in the earlier Phoronix article. This will help those benchmarking their systems debug any problems they might have that otherwise wouldn't be reported in a concise manner. There's also a new test support check feature thanks to a dozen new system tests donated by Intel's Open-Source Technology Center to the Phoronix Test Suite software for integration.
On the OpenBenchmarking.org side there are also other updated tests, including Wine benchmarking improvements.
Another big focus of the Phoronix Test Suite 4.4 development cycle was improving the BSD operating system support. There's better support now for FreeBSD/PC-BSD 9.1, DragonFlyBSD 3.2.2, and other new BSD releases. The external dependencies support has also been improved greatly.
Last but not least, the PTS External Dependency handling was rewritten to offer greater flexibility and new features. Overall, the managing of test profile dependencies should be much more robust and greater reliability for non-officially-supported platforms.
Some other highlights to Phoronix Test Suite 4.4 include detection support of the new F2FS file-system, detection of various niche file-systems, OpenBenchmarking.org integration enhancements, and various Phodevi (Phoronix Device Interface Library) software/hardware detection improvements. Committed since the release of Phoronix Test Suite 4.4 Milestone 3 two weeks ago was support with the new glxinfo for querying the OpenGL Core Profile version of graphics drivers, a few ARM/mobile tweaks, and a couple of fixes.
The next major release of our open-source benchmarking platform, Phoronix Test Suite 4.6, is codenamed "Utsira" with expected availability in Q2'2013. There also might be a Phoronix Test Suite 4.4.1 point release in March that integrates a couple of other stable features I've been meaning to implement.
The new release of Phoronix Test Suite 4.4 for Linux, BSD, Solaris, OS X, and Windows platforms can be downloaded at Phoronix-Test-Suite.com. Commercial support, custom engineering services, behind-the-firewall OpenBenchmarking.org / Phoromatic setups, and other services continue to be offered by contacting us.
Below is the "official" change-log for Phoronix Test Suite 4.4. Benchmarks up!
Phoronix Test Suite 4.4.0-Forsand
26 February 2013
- pts-core: Improvement for detecting installed libraries for external dependency handling
- pts-core: Address redundant dash handling within the result file save name
- phodevi: Support for detecting SurfaceFlinger (Google Android)
- phodevi: Ensure non-ASCII characters are removed from Phodevi properties
- phodevi: Support for reading the OpenGL Core Profile information via glxinfo
Phoronix Test Suite 4.4 Milestone 3
14 February 2013
- pts-core: Incorporate xx.yy (of xx.yy.zz) test profile version string into test result comparison_hash
- pts-core: Return contained tests hash for result files as a raw SHA1
- pts-core: Improving passing of compiler flags/options to be reported on test result graphs
- pts-core: Support specifying just relative include files, shared libraries, and command names for file check in PTS External Dependencies
- pts-core: Faster PTS External Dependencies resolution and file checking
- pts-core: Support for falling back right away to the generic file check lists for packages if not supplied by OS-specific list
- pts-core: Add MacPorts PTS External Dependencies support for handling some package dependencies on Apple Mac OS X
- pts-core: Allow 3D tests to run when LLVMpipe OpenGL is present regardless of the display driver loaded for the graphics card
- phodevi: Add file-system magic blocks for eCryptfs, AuFS, LustreFS, and Panasas PanFS
- phodevi: Add AVX2 (Advanced Vector Extensions 2) CPU instruction set detection
- phodevi: Support for detecting the new F2FS file-system
Phoronix Test Suite 4.4 Milestone 2
30 January 2013
- pts-core: Improvement for detecting errors from failed test installations
- pts-core: Allow "Deprecated" flag for ProfileStatus in the XML test profile schema
- pts-core: Support for scanning test run log files automatically to look for errors when tests fail to execute
- pts-core: Remove duplicate "libtool" PTS External Dependency
- pts-core: Complete rewrite of the FreeBSD external dependency handling to use ports collection
- pts-core: Enable BSD support for checking exit codes on test installation and test execution
- pts-core: Various BSD support improvements
- pts-core: Begin on DragonFlyBSD pkgsrc-based external dependency solution
- phodevi: Fix to improve Xfce version detection when Gtk-Warnings are thrown before the version string
- phodevi: Add Enlightenment desktop environment detection support
- phodevi: Add Consort Desktop Environment (GNOME Fork) detection support
Phoronix Test Suite 4.4 Milestone 1
23 January 2013
- pts-core: Introduce 'common-dependencies' concept to PTS External Dependencies
- pts-core: Fix reporting of some already installed dependencies
- pts-core: Support for listing 'local/' tests from the list-supported-tests command
- pts-core: Support for test profiles providing a 'support-check.sh' file
- pts-core: Support for reporting the Graphics AA/AF values to the system notes table
- pts-core: Add a public version of the TODO list
- pts-core: Don't attempt copying install.log to install-failed.log on empty files
- pts-core: Add fallback to allow matching an operating system to an external dependencies package list based upon the detected package manager
- pts-core: When anonymous usage reporting is enabled, report test installation failures to OpenBenchmarking.org for analyzing problem
- pts-core: Support for detecting common errors within test profile install failures and reporting the relevant information to the user
- pts-core: When installing many tests and there are install failures, conveniently show the errors at the end
- pts-core: When installing multiple tests, report any unknown test profiles/suites
- pts-core: Faster loading of list-available-tests command by not forcing all test profile data be downloaded
- pts-core: Progressively download OpenBenchmarking.org in list-available-suites command to display information faster
- phodevi: Improve Nouveau video RAM memory capacity detection on newer Linux kernels
- phodevi: Warning fix for Radeon GPU frequency detection
- phodevi: Drop "special_settings_string" support
- phodevi: Support for checking if the Gallium3D anti-aliasing level was overrode using GALLIUM_MSAA environment variable
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