OT : Bug/Issue tracking systems

[moogyd]

Hi,

(Off-topic)

I am looking to put an open-source bug/issue tracking system in place
for our current project (eventually expanded for all projects), and
would appreciate any experiences/comments/suggestions.

Note the project is encompasses embedded hardware (ASIC plus firmware)
plus application software.
The easiest method is using a spreadsheet, but this is not very
expandable.

The requirements I have come up with

- Free ;-)
- Easy to setup and maintain (I want this to be an engieering tool, not
an IT project)
- A non linux expert should be able to download and install (rpms OK,
deep understanding of makefiles and linux kernel not OK)
- Ideally via text files, a bit of perl/tcl/python OK. I'd rather
avoid SQL
- Prove the system and then hand-off to IT for maintenance
- Easy use
- Browser UI
- Mail ?
- Linux
- Flexible reporting/search
- User/admin accounts
- Initially internal network access only, eventually external
(customer, partner) access
- Cover HDL, H/W, F/W, Documentation, Change requests. Both ASIC and
FPGA.
- Eventually production issues (Yeild, Test programs?)
- Maybe allow project deadlines included.
- We use CVS, so any loose coupling useful
- We have per project repositories, plus and repository containing
common IP's (i.e a project will always use 2)
- Medium size projects (upto 15-20 people)
- Possible migration to other system in future (which I guess means a
well supported database)

Googling provided with lots of names
- Bugzilla (seems to be in widest use for S/W projects)
- GNATS (I recall using this in a previous job)
- IssueTrackerSystem (ZOPE, Python)
- Trac (Python)
- Plus lots of others

Any suggestions, comments, recommendations or pointers to
papers/tutorals greatly appreciated.

Steven

[Paddy]

mo****@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

Hi,

(Off-topic)

I am looking to put an open-source bug/issue tracking system in place
for our current project (eventually expanded for all projects), and
would appreciate any experiences/comments/suggestions.

Note the project is encompasses embedded hardware (ASIC plus firmware)
plus application software.
The easiest method is using a spreadsheet, but this is not very
expandable.

The requirements I have come up with

- Free ;-)
- Easy to setup and maintain (I want this to be an engieering tool, not
an IT project)
- A non linux expert should be able to download and install (rpms OK,
deep understanding of makefiles and linux kernel not OK)
- Ideally via text files, a bit of perl/tcl/python OK. I'd rather
avoid SQL
- Prove the system and then hand-off to IT for maintenance
- Easy use
- Browser UI
- Mail ?
- Linux
- Flexible reporting/search
- User/admin accounts
- Initially internal network access only, eventually external
(customer, partner) access
- Cover HDL, H/W, F/W, Documentation, Change requests. Both ASIC and
FPGA.
- Eventually production issues (Yeild, Test programs?)
- Maybe allow project deadlines included.
- We use CVS, so any loose coupling useful
- We have per project repositories, plus and repository containing
common IP's (i.e a project will always use 2)
- Medium size projects (upto 15-20 people)
- Possible migration to other system in future (which I guess means a
well supported database)

Googling provided with lots of names
- Bugzilla (seems to be in widest use for S/W projects)
- GNATS (I recall using this in a previous job)
- IssueTrackerSystem (ZOPE, Python)
- Trac (Python)
- Plus lots of others

Any suggestions, comments, recommendations or pointers to
papers/tutorals greatly appreciated.

Steven

Hi Steven,
We mainly do ASIC design and the Verification team installed RT for
local issue tracking at work. I would have suggested Trak, but I was on
a different project at the time and they were doing the work.
RT (http://www.bestpractical.com/rt) does the Job. They have got the IT
team to install it on the compute farm somewhere and after an initial
learning period, they got it to do what they want.
I have used gnats in the past. It worked.
Trac seems to me to have a lot going for it, but, alas, I have not had
a chance to try it.

i notice that you are using CVS. You might want to look into the
facilities available with tools like mercurial
http://blog.arabx.com.au/?p=254,
http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/index.cgi,
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/tools/scm/
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?...12&q=mercurial
At work we pay for clearcase and it does the revision control job very
well, but in another company that were using CVS or RCS I would
re-evaluate the source control needs.

- Paddy.

[Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch]

In <11**********************@l12g2000cwl.googlegroups .com>, moogyd wrote:

The requirements I have come up with

[…]

- Ideally via text files, a bit of perl/tcl/python OK. I'd rather
avoid SQL

You should drop that requirement. The tracker will be used concurrently
and this is handled very efficiently and reliable by a database backend.

Ciao,
Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch

[moogyd]

Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch wrote:

In <11**********************@l12g2000cwl.googlegroups .com>, moogyd wrote:

The requirements I have come up with

[...]

- Ideally via text files, a bit of perl/tcl/python OK. I'd rather
avoid SQL

You should drop that requirement. The tracker will be used concurrently
and this is handled very efficiently and reliable by a database backend.

Ciao,
Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch

Hi Marc,

I am aware that I will probably need a database (probably supporting
SQL), but I would like to avoid having to write SQL queries myself
(i.e. It should all be transparent to me).

Thanks,

Steven

[Phil Schmidt]

Steven,

I have worked with Trac a bit, only to demo it in my company. We ended
up not going with it (for reasons not related to Trac), but I found it
easy to set up and configure. I seems to be a very nice tool. I
especially like the wiki integration, as it makes it really easy to
link tickets with supporting information.

Phil