ToME WikiNeilStevens: Once upon a time, four years ago when I got involved in ToME bug tracking, we used an Internet forum to manage the reports. It was a terrible mess. We did our best to create processes to manage them, but between the lack of organization, the hordes of duplicates, and the limited text formatting, it was a lost cause.
That became one of the driving reasons for me to then found this wiki, along with a hope for improved documentation, centralized community-made spoilers, superior support for the new 'day in the life' fad, and whatever else we ended up doing with it.
Well, it turned out the wiki did work better for bugs. But now, two years into this, we're running hard into the scale limits of this bug tracking method. So the time has come to start using a specialized bug tracking system.
Important specifications:
- No Bugzilla.
- Full-featured mail and web interfaces with no javascript.
- Preferably ruby or python instead of perl or php, in case customization is needed.
- No MySQL requirement. PostgreSQL preferred if an RDBMS is used.
- Ability to share user accounts with this wiki preferred.
- Custom color-coded severity categories.
- Easy creation of many product categories, and transferrence between them.
- User ownership and assignation of tickets.
- Ease of use for bug reporters and developers.
- No Bugzilla.
Early favorites for eventual selection:
Early eliminated options:
Other possible options:
Chatter
KhymChanur: Why no Bugzilla?
NeilStevens: It's a royal pain to use, it has javascript requirements, and it's in perl.
EricStevens: I agree on the Bugzilla stance. It's pretty miserable. I'd stay clear of that hideous mess. Not sure I understand the PHP/Perl/Javascript issues, but whatever.
As for the current favorites, RT and Mantis, they're written in Perl and PHP respectively and both require databases.
RT looks like a clunky mess and the wiki for the docs is also a mess. It looks like no one really maintains it and the mailing list seems to be the only support. We'd probably have to do a lot of customizing to make it really work.
Mantis looks to be rather decent. I haven't been able to completely play with it, but from looking through their own bug tracking it looks to be most of what we need.
NeilStevens: The language of implementation is an issue in case we have to do customization. For example on this wiki, I already had to make two customizations to fight spam: one to add my link blacklist and anti-spam heuristic, one to fix RecentChanges in order to make it easier on me to check for spam.
So I favor software written in good languages that will let me work quickly and effectively. That means I'd prefer Python or Ruby. So it's a real shame that Trac tries to be an everything-in-one, because without the source control stuff and the wiki, my guess is it'd work fine.
As for RT, it's only up there because it appares to have the required feature set, with the only drawback being the maintenance issue.
AerdanRunestar: Re Mantis, the patchset that Audacious uses for its copy of Mantis is available at http://svn.atheme.org/bugs-meta.atheme.org/. You'll want to install Mantis before patching it, however.
ShrikeDeCil: Is this an appropriate spot to be asking questions about the new Bug Tracker? The Bug-wiki is 'core developer only'. Regardless, is it permissible to add 'Tome Module' bugs now? The wiki says 'No!' (yet has some listed) and yet the new bug tracker has a component 'Tome Module'. I was thinking of wandering through all the _old_ wiki-based TOME3 bugs, and seeing how many of them still happen. Then trying to decide if they are engine-or-module related. If completed, the old-wiki would contain nothing relevant to ToME 3 development -> the old page could be pruned/re-headed to 'ToME _2_ Bug Reporting' or something, while the 'fixed' T3 bugs could retire to a separate page to reduce pagesize/confusion/whatever.
DarkGod: I'll accept bug reports for ToME3 module for things inside the "playing frame" or barrow downs/bree as it should be a tad playable now (but not the rest)
EricStevens: You can add bug reports on the bug tracker for the modules that DarkGod has released (ODE, BtbW and ToME), keeping in mind his statement above. There's a component for each of them. I'm thinking about starting a separate sister site for other modules, but I want to see how well our current bug tracker handles things.
If you have questions on the bug tracker, post them to the Tome-bugs mailing list.