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Programmers and Web developers need ways to track bugs. Most prefer customisable Web-based solutions, or if it's not Web-based, it must be Mac and PC compatible. As discussion proved, everyone has a view of what makes a perfect bug tracker. And everyone agrees that the solution should keep things simple.
Derek Lawless expressed an interest in hearing reviews of bug tracking software. He is building a Web-based tool to handle tracking Quality Assurance on internal projects. He needs a tool that can log issues with software, prioritise them, assign a bug to an engineer and track responses to those issues. Lawless wondered if Rational Clearquest provides those functions.
David Meagher is using Rational Clearquest on a current telecoms project. "It's working very well first time we've used it. About 70 people are working on the project."
"Clearquest does it all," said Meagher. "It tracks priorities, submitters, assigned and more. But it's not cheap."
Richard Rodger, programmer at Intercomponentware, also uses Rational Clearquest. "It's a bit of a Swiss Army chainsaw and it's expensive."
Like several other Open subscribers, Rodger reads JoelOnSoftware.com, the author of FogBUGZ. "There's a free 30 day trial of the Web-based software at Fogcreek.com."
"Another simple Web-based one I found is called Issue Manager from Ultraapps.com. It runs off ASP/Access so you'll need IIS to set it up, but it's nice enough for a small team."
"FogBUGZ is pretty good," said Keith Gaughan, developer at Chip eServices in Cork. "I'm rolling my own on the side for work and for my own personal use in ASP. The experience is well worth it, and it's not too difficult."
"It's well worth taking a look at Request Tracker (RT)," said Brian Scanlan, systems administrator at the Irish Times. Its features are described at Bestpractical.com .
"RT is a robust ticketing system designed for the small-to-medium sized enterprise. It can be used for customer support, bugtracking, trouble ticketing, or any other purpose for which a group of folks need to keep track of a list of tasks. It features a number of technologies designed to make it easy to keep track of a large number of tasks, issues and projects."
Citing the Request Tracker description from its Web site, Scanlan said RT uses Web, e-mail and command line interfaces. The Web interface allows each end-user to quickly check on the status of his open tickets. Data is stored in an SQL database that you can audit and report on using standard tools. A granular access control system allows users to do their work but also protects the system.
RT's extensible linking system allows you to tie tickets to each other and to external databases. Its object-oriented design makes it a breeze to build new tools which work with RT's tickets, queues, users and links. Because it's available under the terms of the GNU GPL, it doesn't cost anything to set up and use.
Scanlan thinks "you're better off building on such a system than crafting one by hand."
Colm O'Riordan, technical director at Communicraft, recommends Bugzilla from Bugzilla.org. "It's Web-based freeware, customisable and highly effective if backed up by good bug tracking and handling procedures."
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