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I love the Google Project Hosting web app. It includes bug tracking, wiki and SCM in one interface. (Example: WMD Editor)
This solution is closed source and not for sale. While searching similar solutions I found Trac which has a rougher interface.
Could you list similar solutions?
Someone asked the same question, but specified Git as the SCM.
[EDIT] Since I wrote this answer, an exciting new fully-integrated distributed project management software has hit 1.0: Veracity by SourceGear.
Fossil-SCM is a nice distributed SCM, where "SCM" has the original meaning of "Software Configuration Management" and not the new diluted meaning of "Source Code Management".
What this means is that Fossil integrates distributed version control, distributed bug tracking and distributed wiki into one repository. Not one UI, like, say, Trac but one single repository.
So, if you clone a Fossil repository, you do not just get the latest version of the source code plus all its history, like you would get with Git, Mercurial, Bazaar, Monotone, Darcs or any other version control system, you also get the current bug database plus all its history and the current wiki plus all its history.
Fossil is written by D. Richard Hipp, who is not only the author of SQLite but also CVSTrac (the precursor of Trac). So, you know it's gotta be good.
If you want to see an example of Fossil in action, just the follow the link I posted: Fossil is hosted in Fossil itself and the Fossil homepage is actually just the Fossil repository itself.
BTW: even if you don't end up using Fossil, just spend some time learning its concepts. It's a rather brilliant design, and you're probably going to learn something which you can apply even if you are using Trac, Git, Instiki or whatever.
You might look at redmine.org, I'm just getting familiar with it, having only used it on a project for a couple months, but liking it so far.
If you're willing to tolerate closed source FogBugz is pretty good. http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBUGZ/
They'll let you test it for up to 2 people and if you decide you like it you can either licence space on their servers or purchase to run on your servers.
If you're an open source only kind of guy, I recommend diversifying. Get a couple different pieces of software to do the different things you want. Often times things like SVN will have post commit scripts to link your commits to your wiki or bug tracking, etc.
Its nice when things are bundled, but nicer when you can pick and choose the things you want.
Trac does all of these things.
If you really like the Google Hosting App, you might find InDefero the right choice for you.
I like Assembla.
FogBugz is pretty slick. I've been using for a month and really like it. It has a SCM plugin.
Do you really need all three solutions (SCM, bug tracking, and wiki) in one solution? Why not mix and match the solutions that work best for you?
I've never used Trac, but bugzilla works really well as a free bug tracker. There are lots of open source wikis out there, and for free SCMs, mercurial, git and subversion are all excellent choices.
For paid solutions, Atlassian Jira and Confluence (task tracking and wiki) are okay, but FogBugz is better. Perforce is IMHO the best non-free SCM out there.
Did someone mention Indefero? Looks nice enough so non-techs wont be scared to use it, open source version, private projects... Git support, issue tracker... seems like a good solution.
I'll have to go with echoesofspring on this one. Redmine looks to be a great system as issue tracking/ project management tool if you want to:
1. manage multiple projects with sub-projects
2. project/ task status transparency with clients or project managers
3. repository integration (I haven't used it)
4. Gant charts and calendars and more...
I chose it from this [wiki list of project management tools] :[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project_management_software#!
Related
I'm trying to understand how to use GIT with Xcode 4.2.
I haven't been using GIT actively, but while I was walking through a couple of git operations mentioned in this link it appears that I have a single repository with many projects in it and a recent project in a repository all by itself.
I want to carefully take the project I am currently working on and put it into its own repository so I can safely leverage some of the branching capabilities.
I'm hesitant to begin until I have a better understanding of what's going on. I'd like to know how much is handled within Xcode and what I have to do at the command line.
#manojids comment to learn a source control system (like git) outside of a specific editors integration is a good point. Try to understand the source control system. The integration is a convenience, not a crutch.
Outside of that advice, apple has some docs outlining specifics of how XCode works with git. Here's the link:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/ToolsLanguages/Conceptual/Xcode4UserGuide/SCM/SCM.html
A good online resource is the pro git book available here:
http://git-scm.com/book
If you want to learn and understand Git and its concepts in detail then this book would be best for you here is the link.
Or you can have a drill on it practically if you follow this tutorial.
I hope you will get help.
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SHORT QUESTION
If you want to skip the details below, here's the short question:
I want to know if you keep your app's specifications similarly, in a bugtracker + a wiki and how do you split the information for good management. I look for a simple solution or just a point to start.
DETAILS
I need to keep track of the features for a web app that I want to build. So, I've used MediaWiki to gather a list of features.
For each feature, I have a wiki page where I include functional specs, technical specs and various related brainstormings in FreeMind format or plain text. Also, I include a series of open-questions related to it as TODOs and lots of images for various use cases. I found the wiki to be an excellent place where to keep all these.
I have a page in the wiki with all features transcluded manually so I can see them all in one page, in a specific format.
I also have a page in the wiki where I state what's the goal for v1.0, and a manually transcluded list of features for this version.
In the bug tracker(I use ClockingIT), I want to keep track of the tasks, bugs, etc. in order to build version 1.0 of the product.
ISSUE
Since I keep all features(well, the major features at least) in the wiki, I now feel the need to duplicate them in the bug tracker. Also, after brainstorming on V1.0, I realized there are many smaller features(that are too small to include in the wiki) that I'll need to keep track of in the bug tracker.
The problem is that I end up with 2 systems that will keep and manage the set of features and lots of duplicates will appear, like:
which features get in V1.0 -> this exists in the wiki as a page and the bugtracker keeps a milestone for this; moving a feature from v1.0 to another version, will mean to update both the bugtracker and the wiki
in the bugtracker I add comments as logs for what I do while working on the feature, so the wiki will get deprecated because some part of the brainstorming moves into the bugtracker
the wiki will tend to contain the major features while the bugtracker will contain minor features(like add a button to show/hide a section or something)...but the limit between major and minor features is very subjective and will tend to get messy so I'll have a hard time searching for a feature - I'll have to search in both wiki and bugtracker or I'll have to remember if it was a major or a minor feature
QUESTION
Since I need to keep the features in the wiki because it is an excellent tool for brainstorming, information keeping, etc. what should I include in the bugtracker? How can I efficiently separate these two tools' functionality so they integrate well with each-other and I don't get to duplicate any(or small amount of) data?
Thank you!
I use something mixed. On the wiki, there is a requirements page (among other pages), which describes the features and delivery data. Some features has separated topics where design/implementation details are explained. The requirements topic includes links to bugs with a short description of the bug/feature. Not all features are reflected as bugs. All bugs are listed in the current release section, if they are planned to be fixed in that release. A separated link goes to bug-tracking system to show all the bugs for the product (there are many products in the bug tracker). So:
all features, bug fixes are listed on the requirements page under a particular release;
bug tracking system contains bugs found during testing;
there is no exact definition which requests go to the bug tracker and which don't. An external reviewer may report feature requests as tickets in the bug tracker.
the key point is to keep all the requirements together and organized per release.
Maybe there are better ways to organize things, but this one is the simplest to me, and doesn't require lots of time.
You will need to customize for your needs but have you seen trac : http://trac.edgewall.org/.
This will serve many of your purpose. It combines bug tracker with wiki and other aspects.
Trac is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects. It provides an interface to Subversion (or other version control systems), an integrated Wiki and convenient reporting facilities.
I use Trac to track my bugs related to my php web application. Tough, mainly I register feature request/tasks in trac. Do you find it a good practice, btw?
It's very handy, becouse I can track my tasks via Eclipse/mylyn, comment and fix them. I like trac very much, but I'm afraid of a lot of loosley coupuled tasks, that almost looks like bugs.
Is there a way (or other tracker system) to store my tasks hierarchically? I mean:
Store module (feature)
Add product (feature)
List product (feature)
Delete product (feature)
Unable to delete no name product (Bug)
Other Module.. etc.
Edit: Is there any other good practice where and how to store tasks hierarchically?
Fogbugz has tasks & subtasks, I haven't worked with this feature enough to see if it would help though. You could play around with the hosted eval version, though. (For my taste, the web interface feels to sluggish for me to use it - but I have that problem with lots of things.)
I recognize your problem as one of my own, however I'd prefer to use separate lists/hierarchies.
[update]
At the moment, I am using the starring and heavy search/filtering, and for "keeping my head on" with quickly incoming tasks or larger refactors, I use pen&paper for temporaries (A5 ringbound booklet) and ToDoList for semi-permanents.
JIRA also has this functionality + it's almost free ($10 for 10 users).
See here, and here.
And yes... I think this is good practice, just don't over exploit it.
And this is how it looks like:
You could stick with Trac and look for desired functionality in http://trac-hacks.org/
That looks like what you want (there might be others I just did a fast search):
http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/MasterTicketsPlugin
http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/TracTicketDepgraphPlugin
We are using a couple of plugins from http://trac-hacks.org/ with 0.11 and they work great.
Have a look at the Roundup Issue Tracker.
Years ago, before Trac came out, I wrote several user support and development trackers with it. It's very, very easy to customize the database schema and create new html page templates.
To manage hierarchic tasks, you basically define an IssueClass-based task class that way:
task = IssueClass(db, "task",
dependson=Multilink("task"), # here, you link tasks to other tasks
assignedto=Link("user"),
keyword=Multilink("keyword"),
priority=Link("priority"),
status=Link("status"))
There's a recipe in the Roundup documentation that shows you how to create "blockers" issues, meaning that you can't close an issue if one of its linked issues is not closed:
http://www.roundup-tracker.org/docs/customizing.html#blocking-issues-that-depend-on-other-issues
TargetProcess supports the hierachical structure you want. It's an agile Software Project Management Software, however it features highly customizable development processes and can therefore be used for Waterfall or Kanban/Lean processes also. The deepest hierachical structure you can have goes like this:
Program
Project
Release
Feature
User Story
Task
There is a free community edition which you can use for up to 5 users. TP has a lot more than just task tracking, it features Bug Tracking, Q&A, Help Desk, Time Tracking...
You mind look at GoPlan: http://goplanapp.com/.
It is fully functional project management web application, which provides to create a hierarchy of tasks. There is a free plan, so You can check it easily. You can have task tree with any depth.
Difference between this tool and Trac is that GoPlan is not directed to maintain source code, but a project itself, so You cannot close Your tickets from Eclipse. Unfortunately tasks do not have resolutions (tickets have, but they cannot be arranged in hierarchy), but I think it is not a kind of disadvantage that discourages from using this application.
You've probably already thought of this, but I'll put this in just in case. In Trac, I oftentimes organized tickets as sub-tasks, at least through convention by simply placing links to those tickets in the description of the master ticket. What's nice about this is that closed tickets are shown as crossed out, so you can get an idea of the status of the sub-tickets at a glance. OK, so it's not setting up a hierarchy, but it's a flexible system that also allows you to set up other relationships; for example you can also reference another ticket as a dependency or related issue.
Some of the requirement management tools out there support hierachies, e.g. CaliberRM from Borland. However, these are heavyweight and commercial. This only makes sense if you have some significant amount of information to handle.
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What tips and "standards" do you use in your Redmine project management process?
Do you have a standard wiki insert template you could share or a standard way to work a project using bugs features tasks and support issues?
Do you let issues and updates get emailed into Redmine?
Do you use the forums?
Do you use SVN repository?
Do you use Mylyn in eclipse to work the task lists?
I'm trying to drag our dept. into some web based PM instead of emailed Word docs of vague requirements followed by Word docs explaining how to QA and Deploy that all get lost in a pile of competing updates and projects so that by the time I have to fix something, no one can find any documentation on how it works.
I develop and maintain internal applications for a family of manufacturing companies. As of the time of this comment, I'm the only developer/analyst on the IT team. During the worst of the recession my project demands exploded. As such my project AND issue backlog is quite unwieldy. We are currently in the process of restructuring to expand the team.
Here's how I use Redmine to keep my head straight (to the extent that is possible), my users at bay, and hopefully prevent too much hand-holding of new staff in the future.
I use Subversion for source control, with TortoiseSVN and the aptly named Tortoise-Redmine plugin. Refreshing the Repository on the Redmine project after a commit links the issue, which shows the revision on the issue, and updates my stakeholders via email notification.
I treat the project description as a means of communicating the project's purpose, scope, and lifecycle stage to those who are not involved. That way my users know what I've got on my plate, and what's still on the buffet that I'm eyeballing from a distance.
I use specific role names for my permission sets that indicate more than a set of permissions -- again, as a means of documentation. My roles include the following: Project Manager, Project Team Member, Owner, Primary User, Secondary User, Observer, Overlord (for my bosses...both fun and undeniably correct).
I use the Wiki and Documents for documentation, depending on which I feel is appropriate.
Versions are pretty much useless to me, so instead of using that for planned releases, I use it to group related issues into sprints.
I use Eric Davis's fabulous Stuff-To-Do plugin to organize/re-organize the aforementioned sprints before mass-editing the Target Versions on my issues. This also lets my stakeholders know what I'm working on and how I've prioritized their interests (for better or worse).
To encourage user interaction, I added links to the Redmine project into my applications' Help menus. The "About" box also contains a link to the Redmine project.
Future Plans
I hope at some point to finish my Visual Studio extension for Redmine integration.
Build a code library to loosely couple my application with its Redmine project: automate bug submission, alert subscribing stakeholders from system tray, reusable interactive Help menu driven by Redmine's REST API, etc. (Maybe automate portions of documentation with the Wiki?)
I'm a freelance Ruby and Redmine web developer who runs a development business of one (me). So my Redmine is setup to be pretty lightweight and customer focused. My Redmine also serves double duty for hosting my Open Source projects.
I do allow new issues and updates to be emailed and it works great for email connected users (or those who are always on their iPhones).
I've been using the repository view with git repositories and it's working great. With every checkin I reference the issue with #nnn so the actual issue page will show all the commits to implement the feature.
I found the forums are underused. I think if there was some email integration, they would be more useful.
We have found useful the following practices:
1) Hide "Issue" and "Support" tracker, and file everything as a bug:
time-saver for developers, testers, management;
if some activities are to be billed as "extra" or "new feature" or anything else, quick meetings are arranged to assess them.
2) milestones & versions
I love this, you can easily track down the status of each release and at any time you can download an older package, i.e. to test a bug filed by client.
3) "save" function on "issues" tab: another big time-saver, I have different queries saved for many day-to-day reporting tasks and that's all I need.
4) versioning integration, i.e. using "#123" in comments creates a link to corresponding issue: simply clever!
We use Redmine extensively on our system. We have even set up a "Sales" project for our sales team to use as a CRM. We have a heap of custom fields in this project, and it replaces SugarCRM which we were using before.
Within our system, we have projects for Server and Client software. Server project is broken up into submodules, based on how I have structured the system and sub-repositories, since Redmine likes a seperate repo per project.
We use, as others note, #nnn codes in commit messages to reference tickets. What is cool is that it needn't be a ticket in the same project. Thus, a sales ticket can be blocked by a bug issue, or a support request.
We have just started using Documents for agenda/minutes of meetings. We use Versions to group into releases, on both client and server.
To try to use Redmine Time Tracker plugin to track time, but I always forget to click start or end. We get daily emails about issues that haven't been touched in a while (Redmine Whining, I think), and that have due dates in the past or near future (Advanced Reminder).
Support emails go directly into our Support project, and if the email importing was a bit more robust (sometimes it doesn't create new tickets properly if the Project: line is included in the email), we would have website inquiries automatically generate Sales tickets. As it is, we just have to monitor Support tickets, and move them to Sales if applicable.
Things I would like to be able to do:
Have relationships between our system and redmine, so that tickets can be associated with a user or company in our system. Also, so that we can generate a new company from a Sales ticket at the relevant point. This just requires me to do some work.
Have a relationship between our error tracking software (sentry) and redmine, so that server errors generate a redmine ticket. Again, solvable with current technology.
Have a desktop client to redmine. The server is within our LAN, but being able to have a more flexible way to access the data other than the web page would be great. It's not that there is anything I can't really do in the redmine web interface, but something like Things.app is so much nicer to work in.
Have our support documentation all within redmine, and then generated out onto a public-facing server. That way, our support staff can maintain the documentation, edit in a nice way, and deploy changes out to doc-server.
Redmine has been fantastic for us so far. We use it as a multi-tenant ticketing/agile prioritization queue, and have tied it to SVN as well. In particular:
Installing/maintaining via SVN has been a breeze (I've migrated us from 1.1 to 1.2 to 1.3 to 1.4 via the use of svn switch https//.../branches/1.3-stable . commands followed by the rake migrate commands with only occasional gem installations needed in between).
Backups of the database and stored files is a one-line script execution
We love the Time Tracker and Spent Time plugins. I would kill for a Mac OS X time tracking fat client for some of our office users, but that's beside the point :)
We don't use the Forums much, but heavily use Activity and Roadmap. Tying issues to specific versions is a godsend.
We also have Client/Server distinctions, but use the target version to tie the tickets to specify which goes where (and have open ended NEXT CLIENT RELEASE/NEXT SERVER RELEASE) so as to distinguish between while being worked on.
We mix metaphors for statuses - we use our lists first grouped by these ("Immediate", "Rejected", "Blocked", "Working", "On Deck" "The List", "Waiting For Build", "Released To Test", "Verified", "Released to Production", "Closed", "Cancelled).
Then, within each group above, we have this sorted list of Priorities: ("Immediate", "Prioritize Me", "Design And Size Me", "P1"…"P5", "P-Watch List"). This plus the above allow for easy workflow all from the issues area.
For the basic issues list, we do sort by "Priority", "Parent Task", then "Updated Date" - need that middle one so that Redmine indents nicely should there be a child task in the same grouping.
We use checkin commits to tie commits to issues (i.e., svn ci -m "This fixes #1733 #2.5, holy smoke what a weird foo bug. It is now bacon and unicorns.") - and have it move that issue to "Waiting For Build" (That used to be "Resolved", but I got tired of explaining that "Resolved" did not mean someone can expect to see it released yet).
I think I will have to go investigate the Redmine-stuff-to-do plugin though. +1 Question.
My company works with software and hardware developers of international origin. Before I joined the company, email was used with MS Word documents to relay our issues and bugs with software or hardware to request a fix. This process was impossible to track and maintain any kind of process. I implemented RedMine as a means to track the software and hardware bugs and it's been working very well since. There is a major language barrier with my situation. Thankfully RedMine can display in Sipmlified Chinese language and feedback has shown that this is OK so far from my developers.
Status
- When I find a software or hardware issue, Status is "New"
- When my software/hardware developers have seen this issue and they are working on it, they change status to "In Progress." They can use the % done if they wish from 0 - 50. I have them set % Done to 50 when they feel they have resolved the issue.
- I determine if the issue is fixed, and I change Status to "Resolved" and % done to 100%. This allows me to filter out issues < or equal to 50% to find issues that are still open.
Priority
- Low, Normal, High, Urgent, Immediate all translates well into Chinese.
Due Date
- I use this to tell me when the fix was originally uploaded by my software developers. It may take me 4-6 days to test something and close the issue. I like my Gannt chart to reflect the responsiveness of my software team, not how long it took me to approve the fix.
Category
- This always reflects the version of software or hardware where I found the issue. I use this to see which version of software had the most amount of bugs, and to make sure newer versions of software do not suffer from regression.
I have everyone included on the RedMine watchers list for all bugs. The email comes across as (New), (Resolved), or (In Progress) so my supervisors, and the supervisors and head engineers of the teams involved can all see the email and quickly read what progress is currently being made. Most of the other people involved never login to RedMine, I'm typically the only one. The emails serve perfectly to give instant updates to everyone whose only concern is whether or not progress is being made.
As you mentioned sending Word documents back and forward with your QA - I know this feeling, been there, done that.
The main issue for me was: QA people don't like to add issues in any bug tracker, they note them down in an editor next to them during testing.
We are using Redmine now with a nice addon - Usersnap (Disclaimer: We built the tool to solve this problem for ourselves.
Usersnap is great for web developers - add it to your web project and you will get screenshots directly attached to Redmine tickets - including meta information about the used browser, operating system and so on.
Our QAs/customers can enter bugs now directly in the web application and the devs get easier to reproduce bug reports into Redmine.
We are using the Roadmap section as a clear way to display:
bugs
features (that would be references to your word document, or link to html requirement pages)
reconciliations (differences between production values and test values)
and so on...
That is the main point of consolidation for us. The rest is used in relation with that (for instance, the 'announce' section is used to define the main milestone/release dates used in the roadmap)
In addition to the other comments I recommend the use of the "Stuff To Do"-Plugin (written by Eric Davis I think :)
Using that plugin allows you to drag-and-drop sort the order of issues across multiple projects.
https://projects.littlestreamsoftware.com/projects/show/redmine-stuff-to-do
We use Versions as a way to define sprints, so each Version is a sprint with the Roadmap view giving a clear illustration of progress. Issues in sprints are marked as 'ready for review' when completed and then closed when QA has verified.
We use a Version as a backlog for any issues that fall out of scope or lose their priority etc.
We have been using Redmine for about a year now and it has evolved on its own in many ways. We use versions to group issues together for a release, and categories to group issues by discipline.
Each issue goes through a workflow of new > in progress > resolved. Then the tester will close the issue when happy.
We would love to update the way we use Redmine, there seems to be so many great plugins, but we find so many of them are broken or won't install.
We use the wiki comprehensively for developer documentation.
I use cruisecontrol.rb for CI and FogBugz for bug tracking, but the more general the answers, the better.
First is the technical problem: is there an API for FogBugz? Are there good tutorials, or better yet, pre-written code?
Second is the procedural problem: what, exactly, should the CI put in the bug tracker when the build breaks? Perhaps:
Title: "#{last committer} broke the build!"
Body: "#{ error traces }"
I suppose this presupposes the answer to this question: should I even put CI breaks into my bug tracking?
At my company we've recently adopted the (commercial) Atlassian stack - including JIRA for issue tracking and Bamboo for builds. Much like the Microsoft world (I'm guessing - we're a Java shop), if you get all your products from a single vendor you get the bonus of tight integration.
For an example of how they've done interoperability, view their interoperability page.
Enough shilling. Generally speaking, I can summarize their general approach as:
Create issues in your bug tracker (ex: issue key of PROJ-123).
When you commit code, add "PROJ-123" to your commit comment to indicate what bug this code change fixes.
When your CI server checks out the code, scan the commit comments of the diffs. Record any strings matching the regex of your issue keys.
When the build completes, generate a report of what issue keys were found.
Specifically to your second problem:
Your CI doesn't doesn't have to put anything into your bug tracker. Bamboo doesn't put anything into JIRA. Instead, the Atlassian folks have provided a plugin to JIRA that will make a remote api call into Bamboo, asking the question "Bamboo, to what builds am I (a JIRA issue) related?". This is probably best explained with a screenshot.
All the CI setups I've worked with send an email (to a list), but if you did want—especially if your team uses FogBugz much as a todo system—you could just open a case in FogBugz 6. It has an API that lets you open cases. For that matter, you could just configure it to send the email to your FogBugz' email submission address, but the API might let you do more, like assign the case to the last committer.
Brian's answer suggests to me, if your CI finds a failure in a commit that had a case number, you might even just reopen the existing case. Like codifying a case field for every little thing, though, there's a point where the CI automation could be "too smart," get it wrong, and just be annoying. Opening a new case could be plenty.
And thanks: this makes me wonder if I should try integrating our Chimps setup with our FogBugz!
CC comes with a utility that warns you when builds fail, it probably isn't worth logging the failing build in FogBugz - you don't need to track issues that are immediately resolved (as most broken builds will be)
To go the other way round (FogBugz showing checkins that fixed the issue) you need a web based repository browser - FogBugz is easy to configure so that it shows the right changes.