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 & SVN integration, and easy to install.

Any links to previous discussions about this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,

[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.

[sah → hooande]

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.

[bigbee → hooande]

We also use trac, although it's features are rather basic. We kind of gotten to it by default - because we got it packaged with svn and a wiki. I guess it's just good enough and there was never a reason compelling enough to switch.

[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...

[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.

[LogicHoleFlaw]

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

[mcxx → LogicHoleFlaw]

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 → mcxx]

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.

[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).

[yawl]

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

[rams]

Roundup - http://roundup.sourceforge.net/

[wlievens]

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

[tpimental]

Jira here too

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

[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.

[nikiscevak]

+1 for JIRA

[dshah]

We use JIRA