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Hot topic: choosing bug tracking software
Wednesday, July 17 2002
by Bernie Goldbach


It's possible to use paper and pen to track changes in software projects, but
programmers have found bug tracking software very helpful. Members of the Irish
Open Mailing List discussed the packages they prefer.

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 href="http:// http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBUGZ/index.html">Fogcreek.com."





"Another simple Web-based one I found is called Issue Manager from href="http://www.ultraapps.com">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 href="http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/">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 href="http://www.bugzilla.org">Bugzilla.org. "It's Web-based freeware,
customisable and highly effective if backed up by good bug tracking and handling
procedures."





To subscribe to the Open Mailing Lisit, visit href="http://www.webnet.ie/open">http://www.webnet.ie/open.