Software bugs

Gustavo R. Montesino has released his Google Summer of Code project bug-triage, which according to the release announcement has these features:

• Added integration to upstream BTSes
• Added support to more advanced queries
• Added support to followup to a bug
• Allow selection of columns to show
• Added sorting support
• Allow to select the BTS access method to use (SOAP/BTS)

Popularity: 69% [?]

One bugtracking system that has popped up since I was last posting here is Canonical’s Launchpad.

In mid-2006 James Henstridge talks about Launchpad in the context of it being considered as a bug tracker for Python (note that Python eventually chose Jira and then switched to Roundup). You can also check the more recent Feature Guide to Launchpad.

Popularity: 75% [?]

Nicholas Fitzroy-Dale reviews several bug trackers, and has a list of their common features:

General-purpose features

• Searching and filtering
  • Full-text search
  • Field search
  • Saved searches
  • “Subscribable” searches – get search results emailed periodically or be notified if the search picks up new issues
• Custom fields. Ability to add new trackable fields to issues, search on them etc.
• Full issue tracking. Track issues from the first report to the resolution, including any emails sent back and forth.
• Attachments of images and code

Specialised features

• Import and export: Import bugs from email, from Excel, from Access or other databases; export to a structured text form (CSV, XML) or a database format.

He also discusses how people decide whether or not to use a given tracker:

Reasons given are

• Difficult to set up
• Difficult to change later (ie lack of export option)
• Strange or unfamiliar hardware / software requirements (eg must run on Windows NT, requires J2EE)

Popularity: 66% [?]

Andy Lake from Information Management Services sent a link to Squish, a commerical bug tracking system.

Popularity: 40% [?]

Thinkware’s wiki has a page listing free bug tracking tools.

Popularity: 35% [?]

Jill Stephenson of Tortuga Technologies sent a link to their Ozibug web based bug tracking system, which runs on Java servlet capable platforms.

Popularity: 35% [?]

Juanita Lohmeyer and Maik Hassel introduce Open-Source Bug Tracking
with Bugzilla in Linux Journal.

The article covers motivations for bug tracking and then walks through setting
up your own Bugzilla system, using diagrams.

Popularity: 34% [?]

Mark Howard is developing debbuggtk, a set of graphical applications for interacting with the Debian bug tracking system.

Via tildemh.com.

Popularity: 33% [?]

GNATS is a BTS developed as part of the GNU Project. One of their users set up a page of GNATS web resources, which includes not only GNATS tips but links to other bugtracking (and revision control) systems.

Popularity: 32% [?]

Roman Vichr’s IBM DeveloperWorks article Tips and tricks: a bug’s life lists the features that you might want to consider in a bug tracking system. It also links to several systems.

Popularity: 31% [?]

The Debian bug tracking software is an email based bug-tracking system. All bug submissions and updates are handled via email. There is also a web based system for viewing bug reports.

The Debian BTS was developed for use by the Debian project.

Popularity: 31% [?]

Fog Creek has released a web-based bug tracker and feature request system: FogBUGZ. (Via Joel on Software.) There’s a discussion forum available.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Allied Testing hosts a page linking to over a hundred bug tracking systems.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Malcolm sent a link to a Gamasutra case study [registration required] discussing a commerical game company’s experience using Bugzilla for bug tracking, and describes integrating Bugzilla with third party applications.

Popularity: 30% [?]

The Roundup Issue Tracker can be used as a bug tracking system. It is somewhat simpler than Bugzilla (I don’t think, for example, that it tracks dependencies or has a security system), but nevertheless includes web, email, command line and Python interfaces.

Roundup users include Twisted and opened hand.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Bugzilla is a bug tracking system originally released by Netscape for use in the Mozilla project. It’s quite large and has a lot of features oriented towards projects with large numbers of developers: its own security schema, dependency checking, that kind of thing. It also has a bunch of interfaces including email, although the web interface is the bet know.

Other users of Bugzilla include Red Hat, Mandrake, Ximian, Gentoo and Samba.

Popularity: 30% [?]