RnD use a bugtracker?

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Zomis
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RnD use a bugtracker?

Post by Zomis »

I've been active lately at the Lazarus website, http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org , that website contains a bugtracker found at http://www.freepascal.org/mantis/main_page.php . And so I wonder if it maybe could be a good idea to use a bugtracker for RnD as well. I've been reporting bugs with that bugtracker and I must say that I like it a lot :D

Of course, bugs could still be reported at the forum - but if they're stored at the bugtracker aswell it would be a lot easier to get an overview of them!
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Alan
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Post by Alan »

Its a very efficient way to keep track I admit......but are there that many bugs in RNDs to justify it?
Zomis
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Post by Zomis »

Alan wrote:Its a very efficient way to keep track I admit......but are there that many bugs in RNDs to justify it?
Whether it's 10, 100 or 1000 bugs, I'd say it's justified. A bugtracker doesn't forget old bugs which hasn't been fixed. Forum members and Holgers todo-lists may do so.

And for simple fixes, a bugtracker could make a clear assignment to other members besides Holger (if someone would say "I think I know how to fix this" in the forum, he would probably forget about it), and a bugtracker keeps track of the assignments. But of course, no one knows the code better than Holger.
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Holger
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Post by Holger »

Yes, I think that a bug tracker would be a great thing for R'n'D! (I already had a look at Bugzilla ( http://www.bugzilla.org/ ) for this, but I will also have a look at that bug tracker you mentioned.)

Zomis already mentioned good reasons to use a bug tracking system -- some bug trackers are also very good to enter and administrate non-bug issues like feature requests or annoyances that are no real bugs, and separate them from the "real" bugs that should be fixed soon (or that are classified as "bugs that won't be fixed in the near future").

For all these things, a bug tracker would be very, very useful, I think!

I'll see if I can easily get and install one for R'n'D!

Anybody who knows other good bug trackers that are worth evaluating?
Zomis
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Post by Zomis »

Yes indeed, features can also be tracked with bugtrackers.

The Mantis bugtracker can also categorize the bugs/features, for RnD this could be like "Custom Elements", "Game Engine", "Main Menu", "General Interface", etc.
With Mantis, when a bug is acknowledged/confirmed (I haven't really learned the difference of those), the bugmoderator can also assign a value to the Version Target, which defines which version this bug/feature should be fixed in. For example 3.2.4, 3.3.0, 3.6.0, or the well-known 6.0.0 ;)
With Mantis, you can also see Issue History, with all the changes to the issue (assignments, adding of notes, changing version target, changing category, changing severity, etc.)

As an example of a Mantis issue, take a look here: http://www.freepascal.org/mantis/view.php?id=8475

I'm sure there's many other great bugtrackers out there as well, maybe it's worth to take a look at the sourceforge bugtracker?
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Post by HerzAusGold »

The mantis bugtracker is very good and delivery all what a project needed. I have used it for some greater projects.
And the answer is ... 42 !
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Holger
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Post by Holger »

I had a look at the Mantis site, and I must say that it looks really good! :-)

I think I should just install it for R'n'D and try to use it for tracking bugs and feature requests etc. -- maybe it's just what we need to track bugs better than now in the forum or on my BUGS/TODO lists. :-)

I'll try to find some time next week and install it -- technically, it should fit fine into the current site (being LAMP based (which means Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP based here)).
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Post by Zomis »

Holger wrote:I'll try to find some time next week and install it -- technically, it should fit fine into the current site (being LAMP based (which means Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP based here)).
Any progress on the installation? :)
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Post by Zomis »

Again I wonder: Any progress on the installation?

I've installed a bugtracker on my page which works perfectly. (Although I'm the only one using it... as a "todo list").

http://www.zomis.net/mantis

It didn't took me many minutes to install. It's a very quick process. The problem was to find out the password for the administrator account, which I found out somewhere on the mantis homepage.
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