«

My organization is looking for a Web-based bug tracking system that can
run on Linux and uses either MySQL or Oracle. It doesn't matter too
much what language it's written in, though either Java or something
that doesn't require an interpreter would be preferred over Perl or
PHP. We're looking for something that can be installed easily without a
long period of struggling to get a lot of interdependant components
working together. We don't have a lot of extra time available for a
long process of installing and / or maintaining the system. On the
other hand, we definitely don't want a hosted solution. We prefer to
keep it in-house.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. I know that a lot of
people use Bugzilla, but my sense is that it's more appropriate for
large shops and technically-skilled users. We just have a few people
who will be using the system. Some of the people reporting bugs will
not be engineers and would probably be intimidated by a very complex
UI.

Thanks in advance for any help with this question.

E

"elektrophyte" <> wrote in message
news: oups.com...
> My organization is looking for a Web-based bug tracking system that can
> run on Linux and uses either MySQL or Oracle. It doesn't matter too
> much what language it's written in, though either Java or something
> that doesn't require an interpreter would be preferred over Perl or
> PHP.

It might be worth clarifying the above statement; the reasons one has
for avoiding an interpreter is usually also reasons to avoid Java.

> We're looking for something that can be installed easily without a
> long period of struggling to get a lot of interdependant components
> working together. We don't have a lot of extra time available for a
> long process of installing and / or maintaining the system. On the
> other hand, we definitely don't want a hosted solution. We prefer to
> keep it in-house.

In my experience, setting up Apache with JSP was a lot more troublesome
than setting up Apache with PHP and MySQL. YMMV.

> Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. I know that a lot of
> people use Bugzilla, but my sense is that it's more appropriate for
> large shops and technically-skilled users. We just have a few people
> who will be using the system. Some of the people reporting bugs will
> not be engineers and would probably be intimidated by a very complex
> UI.

Assuming these non-engineers are employees of your shop, it doesn't seem
unreasonable to spend an hour or two as a "training" session to explain how
to fill out the bug report form on Bugzilla. Regardless of what software
you'll use, you'd probably get optimal use out of it if you do spend a few
hours training the non-engineers: they might not know how to write effective
bug reports! Make sure they're aware of the 3 basic pieces of information
that make a bug report useful:

1) How do you reproduce the bug?
2) What did you expect to see?
3) What did you see instead?

Without some informal training (reading the above list may be considered
sufficient "informal training"), the bug reporters might end up just
submitting hard to understand bug reports anyway.

- Oliver

On 2 Sep 2005 11:49:19 -0700, "elektrophyte" <> wrote
or quoted :

>My organization is looking for a Web-based bug tracking system that can
>run on Linux and uses either MySQL or Oracle. It doesn't matter too
>much what language it's written in, though either Java or something
>that doesn't require an interpreter would be preferred over Perl or
>PHP. We're looking for something that can be installed easily without a
>long period of struggling to get a lot of interdependant components
>working together. We don't have a lot of extra time available for a
>long process of installing and / or maintaining the system. On the
>other hand, we definitely don't want a hosted solution. We prefer to
>keep it in-house.

check out Jira. It is not just bugs, but the entire project.
see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jira.html


--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

On Fri, 02 Sep 2005 19:56:49 GMT, "Oliver Wong" <>
wrote or quoted :

> It might be worth clarifying the above statement; the reasons one has
>for avoiding an interpreter is usually also reasons to avoid Java.

Java is not interpreted on the desktop, only in handhelds. It is
JITed, natively statically complied, or hotspotted.

See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/compiler.html
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

On Fri, 02 Sep 2005 19:56:49 GMT, "Oliver Wong" <>
wrote or quoted :

>
> Assuming these non-engineers are employees of your shop, it doesn't seem
>unreasonable to spend an hour or two as a "training" session to explain how
>to fill out the bug report form on Bugzilla. Regardless of what software
>you'll use, you'd probably get optimal use out of it if you do spend a few
>hours training the non-engineers: they might not know how to write effective
>bug reports! Make sure they're aware of the 3 basic pieces of information
>that make a bug report useful:

I wonder if it might pay developers to have a log feature to help in
tracking bugs. It would take a snapshot of the registry and data files
and bundle them up in a zip, then log keystrokes and mouse clicks and
moves (possibly abbreviating moves). Then the vendor would have an a
way of knowing exactly what the user did and where he started from.
Maybe there might be a way to get a screen snap even after the app has
crashed.

In the old days of DOS/Abundance I did a screen snap, stack trace,
crucial application info -- e.g. what variable it was working on in
what array in what file and error message to printer (or virtual
printer) so that they would have something concrete to send me without
any work on their part to copy. Now we have high speed Internet, we
should be exploiting that rather than relying on users to tell us what
happened.

The other tool I have not seen used is something like PCAnywhere where
the vendor and customer watch simultaneously as the customer causes
the problem.

I have found vendors much more willing to take action if accompanied
by a screen shot. That is much more compelling proof there is a
problem than any number of words.

This brings up one of my pet peeves, error message filled with hex and
other gibberish you cannot copy/paste to give to the vendor. Copying
this to paper and transcribing is time consuming and introduces
errors.


--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

"elektrophyte" <> wrote in message
news: oups.com...
> My organization is looking for a Web-based bug tracking system that can
> run on Linux and uses either MySQL or Oracle. It doesn't matter too
> much what language it's written in, though either Java or something
> that doesn't require an interpreter would be preferred over Perl or
> PHP. We're looking for something that can be installed easily without a
> long period of struggling to get a lot of interdependant components
> working together. We don't have a lot of extra time available for a
> long process of installing and / or maintaining the system. On the
> other hand, we definitely don't want a hosted solution. We prefer to
> keep it in-house.
>
> Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. I know that a lot of
> people use Bugzilla, but my sense is that it's more appropriate for
> large shops and technically-skilled users. We just have a few people
> who will be using the system. Some of the people reporting bugs will
> not be engineers and would probably be intimidated by a very complex
> UI.
>
> Thanks in advance for any help with this question.
>
> E
>

Take a look a FogBugz at http://www.fogcreek.com/

I've been reading Joel for a long time, and like his views on software
development.


--

Neill Laney
http://www.laneyconsulting.com

elektrophyte wrote:
> My organization is looking for a Web-based bug tracking system that can
> run on Linux and uses either MySQL or Oracle. It doesn't matter too
> much what language it's written in, though either Java or something
> that doesn't require an interpreter would be preferred over Perl or
> PHP. We're looking for something that can be installed easily without a
> long period of struggling to get a lot of interdependant components
> working together. We don't have a lot of extra time available for a
> long process of installing and / or maintaining the system. On the
> other hand, we definitely don't want a hosted solution. We prefer to
> keep it in-house.
>
> Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. I know that a lot of
> people use Bugzilla, but my sense is that it's more appropriate for
> large shops and technically-skilled users. We just have a few people
> who will be using the system. Some of the people reporting bugs will
> not be engineers and would probably be intimidated by a very complex
> UI.
>
> Thanks in advance for any help with this question.
>
> E
>

go with JIRA - its great.

http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/

elektrophyte wrote:
> My organization is looking for a Web-based bug tracking system that
> can run on Linux and uses either MySQL or Oracle. It doesn't matter
> too much what language it's written in, though either Java or
> something that doesn't require an interpreter would be preferred over
> Perl or PHP. We're looking for something that can be installed easily
> without a long period of struggling to get a lot of interdependant
> components working together. We don't have a lot of extra time
> available for a long process of installing and / or maintaining the
> system. On the other hand, we definitely don't want a hosted
> solution. We prefer to keep it in-house.
>
> Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. I know that a lot of
> people use Bugzilla, but my sense is that it's more appropriate for
> large shops and technically-skilled users. We just have a few people
> who will be using the system. Some of the people reporting bugs will
> not be engineers and would probably be intimidated by a very complex
> UI.
>
> Thanks in advance for any help with this question.
>
> E

Take a look at eventum. Developed and used by the mySQL group.

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/other/eventum/

It, however, PHP-based.

Also take a look at Mantis

http://www.mantisbt.org/

It is also PHP-based. However, both of these are free.

--
Virgil

Oliver Wong <> wrote:
> > We're looking for something that can be installed easily without a
> > long period of struggling to get a lot of interdependant components
> > working together. We don't have a lot of extra time available for a
> > long process of installing and / or maintaining the system. On the
> > other hand, we definitely don't want a hosted solution. We prefer to
> > keep it in-house.
>
> In my experience, setting up Apache with JSP was a lot more troublesome
> than setting up Apache with PHP and MySQL. YMMV.

Setting up Apache with JSP is undoubtedly more troublesome than setting
up Apache with PHP. So why in the world would you set up Apache? This
is just a bug tracking system, after all. I find that setting up Tomcat
(and configuring it to speak HTTP directly) is actually easier than
setting up Apache alone.

On the other hand, if you're looking to handle extreme levels of mostly-
static traffic or need something that Tomcat can't do easily (for
example, URL rewriting or running a PHP app beside the bug tracking
system), then Apache would probably be needed.

> Assuming these non-engineers are employees of your shop, it doesn't seem
> unreasonable to spend an hour or two as a "training" session to explain how
> to fill out the bug report form on Bugzilla.

One good reason might be that the bug reporting form in BugZilla assumes
a lot of procedural stuff that smaller vendors simply won't use. I have
often found myself in search of a smaller bug tracking system instead of
handling the beast that is BugZilla.

--
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

Check CodeBeamer, it is integrated wit version control systems such as cvs,
subversion, vss, pvcs etc.

http://intland.com/products/codebeamer.html

Zsolt

"Neill" <> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:dMjSe.40425$ om...
>
> "elektrophyte" <> wrote in message
> news: oups.com...
>> My organization is looking for a Web-based bug tracking system that can
>> run on Linux and uses either MySQL or Oracle. It doesn't matter too
>> much what language it's written in, though either Java or something
>> that doesn't require an interpreter would be preferred over Perl or
>> PHP. We're looking for something that can be installed easily without a
>> long period of struggling to get a lot of interdependant components
>> working together. We don't have a lot of extra time available for a
>> long process of installing and / or maintaining the system. On the
>> other hand, we definitely don't want a hosted solution. We prefer to
>> keep it in-house.
>>
>> Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. I know that a lot of
>> people use Bugzilla, but my sense is that it's more appropriate for
>> large shops and technically-skilled users. We just have a few people
>> who will be using the system. Some of the people reporting bugs will
>> not be engineers and would probably be intimidated by a very complex
>> UI.
>>
>> Thanks in advance for any help with this question.
>>
>> E
>>
>
> Take a look a FogBugz at http://www.fogcreek.com/
>
> I've been reading Joel for a long time, and like his views on software
> development.
>
>
> --
>
> Neill Laney
> http://www.laneyconsulting.com
>
>