Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 "Iveland" Alpha 2 Is Here

Only ten days have passed since the first Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 Alpha release, but in time for the weekend there is the second alpha release. As I shared earlier this week about what's going on with Iveland and OpenBenchmarking.org, there is a lot going on. All of the latest work can be found in Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 "Iveland" Alpha 2.

Again, this work includes graphing improvements, system tables, HTTPS connection support, statistics reporting, and mobile / ARM-based benchmarking support for the Nokia N900 smart-phone and other ARM tablets running Linux operating systems.

Also found in Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 is nye_Xml, which is a new XML parser and writer library written for the Phoronix Test Suite that has replaced our longstanding tandem_Xml library. The nye_Xml work is based upon the PHP DOM (Document Object Model) extension so this does require PHP DOM support now be available for the Phoronix Test Suite to function. Fortunately, PHP DOM is enabled by default when building PHP5 and most distributions ship with DOM support within their main php-cli/php5-cli package. Fedora users, however, now need to yum install php-dom (or php-xml) prior to running this new version. The bilde_svg_renderer back-end also is utilizing this DOM extension too for optimizing some of the SVG XML output. There's also now a bilde_renderer back-end for SVGZ to supply compressed SVG graphs and tables.

Besides adding a dependency on PHP DOM, another note with this release for some users is that the result file XML schema has changed with Iveland. For end-users this isn't a big deal since pts-core is capable of parsing the PTS1/PTS2 XML composite files to extract the needed information and insert them into the PTS3 structure, but for those organizations who extract the Phoronix Test Suite results themselves from the XML data to toss it in their own result management solution (rather than using Phoromatic), you will need to update your system to properly pull the Phoronix Test Suite 3.0+ data.

Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 Alpha 2 also carries support for OpenIndiana b147, Oracle Solaris 11 Express, and initial support for the Angstrom Linux distribution that is used by some embedded devices. There are also various other improvements to be found in this second alpha release for Iveland.

Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 will officially be released in Q1'2011 in conjunction with OpenBenchmarking.org and a new Phoromatic, but at least two more alpha releases and a couple of betas will be out before reaching that point. You can download our open-source, automated benchmarking software for mobile devices, desktops, workstations, and servers at Phoronix-Test-Suite.com. The Phoronix Test Suite is officially supported on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows 7 x64, BSD, and OpenSolaris operating systems.