[gobolinux-devel] Bugtracking and SCM

[Lucas C. Villa Real]

On 8/9/06, Jonas Karlsson <jonka750 at student.liu.se> wrote:
> For bugtracking I see two alternatives: Mantis or Trac.
> Mantis is a bugtracker only, but is more capable from start then Trac.
> Trac otoh has more features to group collaboration, such as timeline and
> roadmap. As for Wiki, we have our own. Both can be integrated with SVN,
> Trac has it from start, Mantis with a little bit of configuration. What
> this means is that one can add tags, i.e. "issue #123", in the message
> when one checks in code to the SVN repository to have the log message to
> show up as a note in bug #123 in the bugtracker. I think it's even
> possible to close bugs using such tags.

Hey, this is good!

> Anyhow, before making a decission one should have some experience with the
> two, so I have set up an installation of each at my server. There's also a
> SVN repository from a dump of the tools I made a couple of months ago.
>
> Addresses are:
> http://karlsson.sytes.net/gobolinux/mantis
> http://karlsson.sytes.net/gobolinux/trac
> http://karlsson.sytes.net/svn/gobolinux
>
> You have to guess which address leads to which tool by touself ;)
> Sign up for an account and have a look around. The admin username/password
> for the bugtrackers are: gobo/gobo&fibo
> There's one issue with the login on Trac and that is that one cannot log
> out. To log out one has to clear the session cookies or alternativly close
> the webbrowser window.

Thanks for doing that! I'm playing with them here, and these are my impressions:

Trac:
- The wiki is very nice, and can be used to separate documentation
(which should be on the current wiki at gobolinux.org/kb) from
roadmaps and bug reports on specific tools (which should be addressed
fine by Trac's Wiki).
- Nice SVN integration!
- The names aren't that intuitive. I needed to take a time until I
figured that in order to fill a bug I should click in "New Ticket". Is
that name customizable?
- On "View Tickets", there's no information on how many bugs have been
filled on each entry ("total" / "new" numbers should be nice).

Mantis:
- Its main page goes directly to the point, which is good IMHO.
- I wasn't able to confirm my account after creating it in the admin
url (got an "APPLICATION ERROR #1901"). Might have been a problem in
my side, though.
- Very good admin interface to create projects and assign permissions.
- When reporting a 2nd issue on a different project, it looked like
the "switch project" box was not in an optimal location. This also
applies to "view issues", I think (but don't take this as a problem).
- One wishlist feature: I haven't found any way to assign an account
to be notified when new bugs are filled. Is it possible to configure a
default account that'll always be emailed when a new bug is entered?
It's better to me to keep an eye on my mailbox than reloading the bug
tracking's interface.

My final impressions goes for Mantis. I liked it more than Trac, which
seems to be too much "generic". Mantis makes bug tracking very easy,
while keeping a similar interface to the one  seen in other known bug
trackers.

And thanks again for taking your time to configure them! :-)

-- 
Lucas
powered by /dev/dsp