Other issue trackers

Sun Apr 24 17:43:38 EST 2005

There are heaps of issue-tracking systems out there. I look at several here.

Eventum

URL: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/other/eventum/features.html

OSS tracker written for MySQL but available as a general-purpose tracker.

Depends: PHP, MySQL

Mantis

Fogbugz

Bugzilla

Mallone

TrackStudio

URL: http://www.trackstudio.com/

A commercial tracker.

JIRA

URL: http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/

Commercial tracker, written in Java, HTML interface.

Trac

URL: http://projects.edgewall.com/trac/

OSS tracker. Combines Wiki with issue tracker. Still quite new (2004) and missing nonvital features such as management of Wiki pages. It is tied to Subversion and can give code diffs from a Subversion server(?)

Depends: Python, Subversion, SQLite

Jitterbug

URL: http://samba.anu.edu.au/cgi-bin/jitterbug

OSS tracker written by Tridge for Samba. It's now discontinued and the projects that used it have switched to other things.

Custom bug trackers

Debian bug tracking system

URL: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ian/debbugs/

Live site: http://www.debian.org/Bugs/

A custom-written project specifically for Debian (written by the 'Ian' part of Debian actually). It's been around for ages (1994) and is pretty raw. Debian still uses it, but two other major projects which used it (GNOME and KDE) have since moved to Bugzilla.

Depends: Perl, its own mail domain

bugs.kde.org

URL: http://bugs.kde.org/

Looks like a custom-written project but is actually a highly-customised Bugzilla

Features from other trackers

Some features are desirable and general-purpose. Other features are useful but only in specialised contexts. The second category is much larger, but the first probably has more things in it that should be implemented.

Standard features

These are features that literally every tracker has.

• Standard fields: issue name, issue description
• HTML interface

General-purpose features

• Searching and filtering
  • Full-text search
  • Field search
  • Saved searches
  • "Subscribable" searches - get search results emailed periodically or be notified if the search picks up new issues
• Custom fields. Ability to add new trackable fields to issues, search on them etc.
• Full issue tracking. Track issues from the first report to the resolution, including any emails sent back and forth.
• Attachments of images and code

Specialised features

• Import and export: Import bugs from email, from Excel, from Access or other databases; export to a structured text form (CSV, XML) or a database format.

Why people don't use a given bug tracker

Reasons given are

• Difficult to set up
• Difficult to change later (ie lack of export option)
• Strange or unfamiliar hardware / software requirements (eg must run on Windows NT, requires J2EE)