In search for a bug tracking system

1 minute read

I’m about to start a new development project with a new group and we needed some sort of bug tracking system to coordinate all our efforts.  Previously I have used www.mantisbt.org/ but its messy and I don’t like the layout at all.

Requirements

  • Installs on a LAMP system (MySQL, PHP, ect..) - Easy to install, I am lazy and I want to do as little work as possible
  • Self hosted - Paranoia keeps me from using anyone else server.
  • Web interface  - Need somewhere to submit a ticket.
  • Notification - The user that submitted the ticket needs to be notified when we add a comment.
  • Roll and category based access control - I don't want security based tickets visible to the public
  • Required fields: Department/Category, Status, Priority, issue, steps to reproduce, Attached files.

Nice to haves

  • Free or cheap -
  • Email interface - I would be nice if users could submit and comment on tickets via email instead of having to log in to the web interface.
  • Integrates with SVN - Some way of telling the user what version of the code this ticket was resolved in.
  • The ability to add custom fields.

Different Bug tracking systems out there

  • Redmine - Written in Ruby on rails and will not run out of the box on a LAMP system.
  • Bugzilla - Mature, its been around for years and used by many different projects. IT scales increadably well up to extreamly large projects such as Mozilla's bug tracking system
  • Trac - I really like how minimalist it is. Written in python and uses MySQL for a database.

In the end I went with Trac because how how easy it was to install and its minimalist feel.

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