

Ask YC: Bug tracking software? - slackerIII

What is everyone using for bug/issue tracking software these days?  I'm looking for something  to run on my own dev server, not a hosted solution.  Bonus points for being lightning fast, IRC &#38; SVN integration, and easy to install.<p>Any links to previous discussions about this would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks,
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hooande
I use trac, a management tool that's usually used for open source projects
<http://trac.edgewall.org/>. Admittedly its issue tracking features aren't
very advanced, but it does an excellent job of integrating your subversion
repository, tickets and a wiki. It's one of the better tools for finding out
what happened and why.

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sah
I've also had good experience with Trac. If you need sophisticated traditional
bug tracking features, it isn't quite all there: you can't assign a bug to
more than one version, or more than one component, for example. But its
subversion and wiki integration are features I can no longer live without.

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MikeW
It has been about 1.5 years since I investigated bug trackers, and the
software packages may have grown features/fixes since.

In my mind the choice of bug trackers comes down to who is the intended
audience for it. Is it used for tracking issues by just the developers, or do
end users also have access to it (You need a straightforward reporting method
- users get very confised)?

You didn't say if you want to use a web-based tracker, or a desktop based
version.

Briefly some of _my_ thoughts on some web based trackers:

\- Flyspray - I discounted this because it didn't support custom fields at the
time. A quick googling shows this feature is in development.

\- Trac - Horribly confusing for my bug reporters. Has so many features that's
easy to get sidetracked into other parts (such as wiki) and content sprawl.
Difficult to theme if you have a standard layout for a public site. It has a
very cumbersome flow from visiting the tracker to getting an issue filed
properly.

\- Mantis - At first it looks really ugly but I've been overjoyed with it. It
supported custom fields like I wanted. It was _SO_ customisable. A limited
amount can be done through a GUI but there are an insane number of items that
can be configured through the config file. A downside to mantis was the awful
documentation.

Mantis _does_ have some SVN integration if you're willing to dig through the
source code and set it up manually. It's possible setup a SVN commit hook to
automatically resolve bugs in the tracker that contain strings like "fixed bug
25" (again, customisable through regular expressions) or a bug is referenced
in commit messages, that commit can be added automatically as a note to the
bug. (This is in the manual)

I also really liked mantis security groups. It's _very_ flexible when you look
at the config files (useful if you have end users submitting say sensitive
attachments and only want devs/admins to access it), etc...

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bomberstudios
I don't have enough kind words for Redmine <http://redmine.org>. I have been
using it for some time and it is _perfect_ as a simple bugtracker/SVN
browser/wiki.

It's open source and built in Rails, and it's easy to tweak to suit your needs
(via a plugin system) and perfect if you want to get your feet wet with Rails.

As for speed, I'm using it on a shared host with Passenger and it fast enough.
Speed on a VPS is quite nice, and it flies on a local network.

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LogicHoleFlaw
We use BugZilla here at work but I'm not a huge fan. There must be a better
way to do this.

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mcxx
We (or should I say 'I', as I'am the only developer) also use Bugzilla. I
agree that it may be complicated at first, but it does pay of to learn it.
(note: I have only used Trac and Bugzilla during my career, but as I am
satisfied with BZ I don't have a need to try out anything else.)

I recommend to turn off features you do not need and ignore those, you cannot
turn of. It will be easier to work with.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
The software is certainly capable but the incredibly baroque interface is a
huge turn-off to me. It also doesn't integrate with a lot of the tools I use
in my workflow. There's probably a good opportunity here to create something
which blows the competition out of the water.

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SwellJoe
I've had positive experiences with:

Roundup, FlySpray, Trac, and RT

We currently use FlySpray, because it integrates with our Joomla website
reasonably nicely. Roundup is probably the most comprehensive issue tracker of
the lot, in the sense that extending it is trivial (just add whatever you want
to the db, and the UI adapts). RT is probably the most mature and FlySpray the
least so, but all are stable and work reliably.

Trac, of course, is the only one of those that integrates with SVN.

All are plenty fast and easy to install (all have a dependency or two or
three, but nothing onerous).

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yawl
If you are a rails shop, redmine is good too. I have used jira, mantis, trac,
but do not like any of them.

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rams
Roundup - <http://roundup.sourceforge.net/>

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wlievens
I really like Trac. The wiki/versioncontrol/bugtracking features are well-
integrated. I think it's quite suitable for small to medium organizations.

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tpimental
Jira here too

<http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/>

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gm
mantis - <http://mantisbt.com>

Does not do all you want... No IRC and no SVN integration. That's pretty
limiting if you actually do need that stuff. Go the TRAC route someone else
mentioned if you really do require SVN integration.

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nikiscevak
+1 for JIRA

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dshah
We use JIRA

