Ask YC: Your bug tracker • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask YC: Your bug tracker

#11

Post by fendale » Mon, Oct 22, 2007, 7:48 PM UTC

ivankirigin wrote: post #9

foodawg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to second Trac. I'm using it primarily because of its easy integration with Subversion.

Indeed. I just started using it, and it's quite good. Has anyone experienced a speedup by not using the built in server?

I have a trac 0.94 install running on a pentium 800 through Apache and its definitely fast enough. I am not using Fast CGI though, so it could potentially be faster.

Re: Ask YC: Your bug tracker

#12

Post by mrevelle » Mon, Oct 22, 2007, 7:53 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #5

I've used Bugzilla, Mantis, JIRA, Netbeans' bug tracker, and FogBugz and found that they all basically suck. So I'm just going to give you a list of features that I'd like to see: 1.) A clean & simple UI. Reporters should just have a text field to enter the bug description and a way to attach screenshots/tracebacks/logfiles/tests/patches. All the priority/component/version/milestone/assignee stuff should be filled in…

We use Lighthouse (http://lighthouseapp.com/) and find it simple, extensible, and useful.

It covers most of your points but doesn't include bug reporting/tracking by people not on a project (e.g., users). Their API and email integration should make it easy to integrate your own "report a bug" form.

Re: Ask YC: Your bug tracker

#13

Post by abstractbill » Mon, Oct 22, 2007, 8:40 PM UTC

emmett wrote: post #2

We use Trac at Justin.tv. The only thing that really bothers me is that it's kind of slow - up to 2 seconds to load a page. Other than that, it seems "good enough", but I'm sure there are advances to be made that I've never thought of.

I love the way Trac integrates with subversion. A friend of mine even wrote a nice plugin that allows you to close a bug in Trac just by doing an svn commit, by writing stuff like:

svn commit -m "Stopped electrocuting users, fixes #4959."

Re: Ask YC: Your bug tracker

#14

Post by SwellJoe » Mon, Oct 22, 2007, 8:42 PM UTC

ACSparks wrote: post #7

I submitted a similar idea as a last second YC application. Basic points of differentiation were that it would be fully extensible (add/remove any input fields), and that it would have a killer API. The API would allow you to submit issues from anywhere you please: you could write a plugin for Eclipse (or favorite IDE) or you could widgetize it into a js include file so people could submit issues directly from your w…

Just wanted to chime in that Roundup and trac are extensible with regards to fields, as well as actions. Both have a pretty good API, as well.

Re: Ask YC: Your bug tracker

#15

Post by SwellJoe » Mon, Oct 22, 2007, 8:45 PM UTC

ivankirigin wrote: post #9

foodawg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to second Trac. I'm using it primarily because of its easy integration with Subversion.

Indeed. I just started using it, and it's quite good. Has anyone experienced a speedup by not using the built in server?

We had it running fine under FastCGI, as well as mod_python for a few quite large projects and about 30 active developers (and a few dozen moderately active users). Speed wasn't a problem in either of those modes, but I recall that when it was straight CGI or using it's own server it was close to unusable.

Re: Ask YC: Your bug tracker

#16

Post by sylvaincarle » Mon, Oct 22, 2007, 8:47 PM UTC

emmett wrote: post #2

We use Trac at Justin.tv. The only thing that really bothers me is that it's kind of slow - up to 2 seconds to load a page. Other than that, it seems "good enough", but I'm sure there are advances to be made that I've never thought of.

Trac is perfect for us. The integration of everything in the wiki and just enough database like features makes it a killer combo for small teams (5-7). Just linking to tickets and svn changesets with wiki-like syntax is great. If you use Trac be sure to visit trac-hacks.org for plugins and macros to enhance your install.

Re: Ask YC: Your bug tracker

#17

Post by inklesspen » Mon, Oct 22, 2007, 8:51 PM UTC

We should be able to easily split one bug report into multiple reports (for cases where one bug has multiple causes, or the reporter incorrectly perceived multiple bugs as a single bug) while keeping history of the case. And vice versa, for when a single bug is reported multiple times. Most bug trackers just let you resolve things as duplicates, which is kinda half-assed.

Re: Ask YC: Your bug tracker

#18

Post by neilc » Mon, Oct 22, 2007, 11:17 PM UTC

abstractbill wrote: post #13

emmett wrote: post #2

We use Trac at Justin.tv. The only thing that really bothers me is that it's kind of slow - up to 2 seconds to load a page. Other than that, it seems "good enough", but I'm sure there are advances to be made that I've never thought of.

I love the way Trac integrates with subversion. A friend of mine even wrote a nice plugin that allows you to close a bug in Trac just by doing an svn commit, by writing stuff like: svn commit -m "Stopped electrocuting users, fixes #4959."

Cool, we use that plugin. The only thing that annoys me is that when you're merging branches with svnmerge, it includes a copy of the log messages for all the merged revisions -- which is then processed by subversion, and has the effect of re-closing or annotating any Trac tickets mentioned in those commit messages.

Re: Ask YC: Your bug tracker

#19

Post by sbraford » Mon, Oct 22, 2007, 11:40 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #5

I've used Bugzilla, Mantis, JIRA, Netbeans' bug tracker, and FogBugz and found that they all basically suck. So I'm just going to give you a list of features that I'd like to see: 1.) A clean & simple UI. Reporters should just have a text field to enter the bug description and a way to attach screenshots/tracebacks/logfiles/tests/patches. All the priority/component/version/milestone/assignee stuff should be filled in…

I've had great luck with Unfuddle: http://unfuddle.com/

They also offer svn hosting, but that is optional. (you can simply use them as a bug tracking system)

They've been very responsive to feature requests and have fixed several bugs/issues that we complained about, when they were still in their early days.

Re: Ask YC: Your bug tracker

#20

Post by sbraford » Mon, Oct 22, 2007, 11:41 PM UTC

foodawg wrote: post #8

emmett wrote: post #2

We use Trac at Justin.tv. The only thing that really bothers me is that it's kind of slow - up to 2 seconds to load a page. Other than that, it seems "good enough", but I'm sure there are advances to be made that I've never thought of.

I'm going to second Trac. I'm using it primarily because of its easy integration with Subversion.

Trac is sweet but is simply a royal pain to setup.

Anyone offer an outsourced, hosted version of Trac? =)