Should we set up a issue tracking system?

schlesi

Hello,

we've now 94 registered users on trinity.neooffice.org, the 100-users-milestone is not far away Smile

and we have some testing activity.

I'm wondering, if it would make sense to set up an issue-tracking system for handling the testing feedback. What do you think?

Thomas

OPENSTEP · Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2003 10:01 am Post subject:

I've toyed with setting up a BugZilla system from time to time and have server space to do so. I know Neo's still at the point where there'd be only one bug ("It's broken!"), but NeoJ could probably make use of a bug tracking system.

ed

pluby · The Architect Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949

This is a good idea. Although I don't have any time to devote to this, it would be nice to have a tool to keep track of our bugs.

If anyone has the time and server to set this up, I know that Bugzilla is open source and only needs a MySQL database to run. You can check it out at http://www.bugzilla.org/.

Patrick

schlesi · Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2003 10:42 am Post subject:

Ok, I'll try to set up bugzilla.

Thomas

OPENSTEP · Posted: Sat Sep 20, 2003 2:03 am Post subject:

My general thoughts are that I'm already hosting a mysql database for trinity, and am in the process of moving it to a better server to try help trinity deal better with its newfound load. I've got the backend covered, i'm just unsure of what bugzilla needs on its front end for tracking.

seeing as sourceforge and collabnet are both based on bugzilla (and should be open source themselves...wait...) it's probably easier then I think Smile

ed

schlesi · Posted: Sat Sep 20, 2003 1:17 pm Post subject:

@Ed: does your last posting mean, that you are setting up a bug tracking system for NeoOffice(J)?

Thomas

jakeOSX · Ninja Joined: Aug 12, 2003 Posts: 1373

hey, popping in late in the topic (stupid hurricane)

but

i do have MySQL and could easily set something like this up.

so let me know if you'd like me to.

-jake

nedrichards · Agent Joined: Sep 18, 2003 Posts: 18

heh, ed. Actually the install of Bugzilla in the OOo version SourceCast (the collab.net thingy) is way out of date (according to Gerv the very nice Bugzilla man) The newer versions of bugzilla are supposedly much nicer. It's still a bit of a pig to install though i hear unless you're familiar with the wayward ways of perl.

to answer the it should be open source, SourceCast is like WebSphere, LGPL/BSD/Apache licenced products mixed up with a heady brew of proprietry stuff unltil you don't know what's happening. Also there isn't currently the budget to pay for the latest upgrade (as sported by several other sun sponsered open source sites like NetBeans.org)

But yes a Neo (vinalla mozilla.org) bugzilla would be 'teh rock'.

pluby · The Architect Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949

Ed,

The open-source version of Bugzilla (i.e. the one that Mozilla.org develops) is basically Perl CGI scripts that interact with a MySQL database. Mozilla.org and Apache.org has been using this setup for their bug tracking for several years now.

I would definitely recommend staying away from CollabNet's tweaked version. From my experience, the version used for OpenOffice.org has been tweaked so much that it has become a bear to maintain.

In contrast, the Mozilla.org and Apache.org installations are very simple: anyone can create an account and file a bug. These installations don't impose OpenOffice.org's tweaks that put privilege restrictions on nearly every operation.

Patrick

OPENSTEP · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 10:32 pm Post subject:

(back from backpacking)

Yeah, I hadn't been planning on looking at anything except raw bugzilla. The trick will be trying to distill it down to something moderately accessible for mere mortals to use to file issues. The CN OOo one's interface is a dog for me to use, much less a casual user searching for bugs or trying to file them Sad

If it's just some perl CGIs I may be able to get them up and running fairly quickly...I just moved the database over to an "almost" dedicated database server, so I think it should be able to dish out bugzilla as well as trinity (which trinity seems to have been struggling to do on her own...)

ed

fa · The Architect Joined: May 27, 2003 Posts: 88

schlesi,

I've got this AlphaServer with a GB of RAM sitting here, so I could drop MySQL on it and put one of the bugtracking things on top. It currently only hosts my "OpenOffice.org on the Mac" blog.

I've been investigating Bugzilla and phpbt.

Dan

OPENSTEP · Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 9:45 am Post subject:

Yeah, definitely if you're thinking of doing it if you could host the database too that'd be great Smile

My database server's configured to only be accessible on my local net.

ed

jakeOSX · Ninja Joined: Aug 12, 2003 Posts: 1373

Just to confirm, (so we don't get five installs), Dan is going to install and set up the NeoOffice Bugzilla, correct?

-j

OPENSTEP · Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2003 2:27 pm Post subject:

Right now Dan's offered to look into getting bugzilla up and running for us. He's currently looking into using either bugzilla or the following:

http://phpbt.sourceforge.net

The issues with bugzilla are that it's a bear to install (it wouldn't install on my OpenBSD box as it hates mod_perl and really really really wants to use sendmail instead of SMTP servers with authentication). Dan also expressed concern about administration of groups and the like and suggested that phpbt may be a better solution, less complex to administer and probably a bit easier for users.

thoughts? Most of my experience has been with bugzilla (and variants), and most of that experience has been frustrating at best Wink

ed

nedrichards · Agent Joined: Sep 18, 2003 Posts: 18

Bugzilla can be a bit irritating, the advantage of it is that there's some good mailing lists out there and Gerv (http://www.gerv.net/) would I'm sure be happy to give you a hand on the install.

However PHPBB looks pretty slick. I think the question is, how big to we anticipate all this being? Bugzilla ceratinly scales to hundreds of thousaands of bug reports and loads of registrations but if we don't anticapte being quite as popular as mozilla.org or OOo then it might be worth going for the easier to install or hack at package. (and as a personal issue I find PHP about a zillion times easier to read than Perl)