5 ms·

Upcoming Bugzilla releases and more fun stuff

68 points by buovjaga 4y ago

dig1 4y ago
I'm very happy about this. A few days ago, I checked the Bugzilla site for new releases because I'm considering it again for another project. It is not shiny like ClickUp et al., but, IMHO, the issue tracker, should be a piece of software straight-to-the-point, a little bit dry. I'm not going to live in my issue tracker. Another tool I still appreciate is Jira (I'm aware that might raise some eyebrows :P). But, unfortunately, I find everything else as (still) half-baked, heavy, or simply not-there-yet for any serious usage outside of pet project management. I am begrudgingly saying this after a large client moved to ClickUp, which was a total management disaster, not to say that using uBlock Origin will make ClickUp (randomly) unusable.
- gtirloni 4y ago
  > I'm not going to live in my issue tracker. You're very lucky.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Really, it's nicer to have a very-lightweight one if you do have to live in it. The #1 feature I've wanted in Jira and Asana is the ability to have links open in a plain-HTML version that comes up almost instantly, but is read-only (or at has very limited write capabilities) and has a link at the top for the full-fat version. I hate clicking a link to one of those and waiting several seconds for it to load, then feeling like I can't leave their stupid tab open because it's eating 500MB of memory—which just means I cold-start their "app" even more often, so more waiting. I also don't like browsing issues in an "app" where any mis-click or accidental drag action might do god-knows-what even if it didn't land on something obviously interactive, and could even go unnoticed so I don't even realize I need to try to undo something. I get that I'm not going to win any arguments that these things shouldn't be so enormous to begin with (they really, really shouldn't though) but I hold out a small amount of hope "lightweight links as an opt-in feature" might catch on.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  I highly recommend playing with Redmine - there are a few companies that have guest Redmine instances set up. I've used just about every project management tool for personal and small teams (up to a dozen devs and lead) from 2010ish to about 2020 (when the trend to post another one every week on Show HN began). I always come back to Redmine - it's that good. Easy to add tasks, easy to set dependencies, easy to see at a glance where the project is and what is stalling it. And very little javascript.
  - schipplock 4y ago
    Redmine is nice, using it since 2011 :).
- OJFord 4y ago
  Weird, 'half-baked, heavy' is how I'd describe Jira. It does so much, without cohesion; the only thing its myriad features align on is making it slow and clunky! Try moving an issue for a fun one - it throws you into some janky full-page multi-step form, except it's all done on step 2 and there's seemingly no reason it couldn't have been done from the more 'app-like' UI you were previously in. I don't know if it is, but it gives me a very Java vibe - but maybe I'm just being unfair to Java.
theshrike79 4y ago
Do non-OSS companies still use Bugzilla? Looking at their pages it's just Apache + Linux distros and Libre/OpenOffice.
- myfonj 4y ago
  WebKit has ancient public-facing Bugzilla instance as well: https://bugs.webkit.org/ https://bugs.webkit.org/
- gertrunde 4y ago
  The linked article states: There are a number of US government agencies who use Bugzilla internally (NASA is a publicly visible example). So definitely some :) (And I've set it up in a couple of former companies, although I've no idea if they still use it).
  - i386 4y ago
    I know for a fact that NASA (at least JPL) uses JIRA. My marketing manager and I had organized with JPL to put out a press release when Mars Curiosity landed on Mars. We waited up all night for the Rover to land and got the OK from JPL to publish. It was cool being a very small part of that journey by virtue of my product being used to develop the mission software! https://www.atlassian.com/customers/nasa https://www.atlassian.com/customers/nasa
rr888 4y ago
I always wanted to replace Jira with a good free open source alternative but never managed it. I figured Bugzilla was one of the best, but it really isn't widely used enough any more. I'd love to use it.
- cxr 4y ago
  They put out a help-wanted call several months ago on the mailing list <https://lists.bugzilla.org/pipermail/developers/2022-August/010231.html https://lists.bugzilla.org/pipermail/developers/2022-August/...> There's a similar appeal at the bottom of this post. Bugzilla used to be written in Tcl. It got rewritten in Perl because they recognized that it would be easier to get people to contribute to it if they did. For the same reasons, the same thing should happen again; today, the fact that it's written in Perl is a liability in much the same way that it was a strength circa Y2K. I love Bugzilla, and it'd be great if everyone would drop out of the mass psychosis that GitHub issues (and the culture that has developed there) represents anything close to the correct or optimal way to manage bugs. I can't, however, actually expect or recommend with a straight face that anyone deploy or work on it, considering it's a foreign codebase written in Perl, so it's not something I want to do myself, either.
  - lokar 4y ago
    Google was on a heavily customized bugzilla for years and then just wrote a replacement from scratch
    - gsnedders 4y ago
      This is true of many, many organisations.
- ubanholzer 4y ago
  For us, GitLab is the perfect match between enterprise (GitHub, Jira) and open-source software. We used the OSS version for years and switched to EE 2-3 years ago.
jackbravo 4y ago
Any users of github for issue tracking? I see tons of open source projects using them and I find it also simple enough on one hand, but with enough features: - labels - milestones - templates for PRs and issues - simple linking system between issues and PRs - @mentions - and the new project interface is pretty good, with kanban boards and table reports I wish more enterprise projects used that instead of jira, since also a lot of enterprise projects are already using github for code repositories.
gsnedders 4y ago
A stable release of the Harmony branch can't come soon enough—using bugs.mozilla.org shows they've gone far beyond upstream Bugzilla, and merging a lot of those changes back into upstream Bugzilla has been a long a time coming.
igouy 4y ago
Long ago I looked into using Bugzilla (because it always seemed to get suggested) but as-best-as-I-remember it seemed clunky. Instead we chose Mantis and that did what we needed. https://www.mantisbt.org/demo.php https://www.mantisbt.org/demo.php Is there now some obvious reason to choose Bugzilla instead?

68 points by buovjaga 4y ago

dig1 4y ago

I'm very happy about this. A few days ago, I checked the Bugzilla site for new releases because I'm considering it again for another project. It is not shiny like ClickUp et al., but, IMHO, the issue tracker, should be a piece of software straight-to-the-point, a little bit dry. I'm not going to live in my issue tracker. Another tool I still appreciate is Jira (I'm aware that might raise some eyebrows :P). But, unfortunately, I find everything else as (still) half-baked, heavy, or simply not-there-yet for any serious usage outside of pet project management. I am begrudgingly saying this after a large client moved to ClickUp, which was a total management disaster, not to say that using uBlock Origin will make ClickUp (randomly) unusable.

gtirloni 4y ago
> I'm not going to live in my issue tracker. You're very lucky.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Really, it's nicer to have a very-lightweight one if you do have to live in it. The #1 feature I've wanted in Jira and Asana is the ability to have links open in a plain-HTML version that comes up almost instantly, but is read-only (or at has very limited write capabilities) and has a link at the top for the full-fat version. I hate clicking a link to one of those and waiting several seconds for it to load, then feeling like I can't leave their stupid tab open because it's eating 500MB of memory—which just means I cold-start their "app" even more often, so more waiting. I also don't like browsing issues in an "app" where any mis-click or accidental drag action might do god-knows-what even if it didn't land on something obviously interactive, and could even go unnoticed so I don't even realize I need to try to undo something. I get that I'm not going to win any arguments that these things shouldn't be so enormous to begin with (they really, really shouldn't though) but I hold out a small amount of hope "lightweight links as an opt-in feature" might catch on.
dotancohen 4y ago
I highly recommend playing with Redmine - there are a few companies that have guest Redmine instances set up. I've used just about every project management tool for personal and small teams (up to a dozen devs and lead) from 2010ish to about 2020 (when the trend to post another one every week on Show HN began). I always come back to Redmine - it's that good. Easy to add tasks, easy to set dependencies, easy to see at a glance where the project is and what is stalling it. And very little javascript.
- schipplock 4y ago
  Redmine is nice, using it since 2011 :).
OJFord 4y ago
Weird, 'half-baked, heavy' is how I'd describe Jira. It does so much, without cohesion; the only thing its myriad features align on is making it slow and clunky! Try moving an issue for a fun one - it throws you into some janky full-page multi-step form, except it's all done on step 2 and there's seemingly no reason it couldn't have been done from the more 'app-like' UI you were previously in. I don't know if it is, but it gives me a very Java vibe - but maybe I'm just being unfair to Java.

theshrike79 4y ago

Do non-OSS companies still use Bugzilla? Looking at their pages it's just Apache + Linux distros and Libre/OpenOffice.

myfonj 4y ago
WebKit has ancient public-facing Bugzilla instance as well: https://bugs.webkit.org/ https://bugs.webkit.org/
gertrunde 4y ago
The linked article states: There are a number of US government agencies who use Bugzilla internally (NASA is a publicly visible example). So definitely some :) (And I've set it up in a couple of former companies, although I've no idea if they still use it).
- i386 4y ago
  I know for a fact that NASA (at least JPL) uses JIRA. My marketing manager and I had organized with JPL to put out a press release when Mars Curiosity landed on Mars. We waited up all night for the Rover to land and got the OK from JPL to publish. It was cool being a very small part of that journey by virtue of my product being used to develop the mission software! https://www.atlassian.com/customers/nasa https://www.atlassian.com/customers/nasa

rr888 4y ago

I always wanted to replace Jira with a good free open source alternative but never managed it. I figured Bugzilla was one of the best, but it really isn't widely used enough any more. I'd love to use it.

cxr 4y ago
They put out a help-wanted call several months ago on the mailing list <https://lists.bugzilla.org/pipermail/developers/2022-August/010231.html https://lists.bugzilla.org/pipermail/developers/2022-August/...> There's a similar appeal at the bottom of this post. Bugzilla used to be written in Tcl. It got rewritten in Perl because they recognized that it would be easier to get people to contribute to it if they did. For the same reasons, the same thing should happen again; today, the fact that it's written in Perl is a liability in much the same way that it was a strength circa Y2K. I love Bugzilla, and it'd be great if everyone would drop out of the mass psychosis that GitHub issues (and the culture that has developed there) represents anything close to the correct or optimal way to manage bugs. I can't, however, actually expect or recommend with a straight face that anyone deploy or work on it, considering it's a foreign codebase written in Perl, so it's not something I want to do myself, either.
- lokar 4y ago
  Google was on a heavily customized bugzilla for years and then just wrote a replacement from scratch
  - gsnedders 4y ago
    This is true of many, many organisations.
ubanholzer 4y ago
For us, GitLab is the perfect match between enterprise (GitHub, Jira) and open-source software. We used the OSS version for years and switched to EE 2-3 years ago.

jackbravo 4y ago

Any users of github for issue tracking? I see tons of open source projects using them and I find it also simple enough on one hand, but with enough features: - labels - milestones - templates for PRs and issues - simple linking system between issues and PRs - @mentions - and the new project interface is pretty good, with kanban boards and table reports I wish more enterprise projects used that instead of jira, since also a lot of enterprise projects are already using github for code repositories.

gsnedders 4y ago

A stable release of the Harmony branch can't come soon enough—using bugs.mozilla.org shows they've gone far beyond upstream Bugzilla, and merging a lot of those changes back into upstream Bugzilla has been a long a time coming.

igouy 4y ago

Long ago I looked into using Bugzilla (because it always seemed to get suggested) but as-best-as-I-remember it seemed clunky. Instead we chose Mantis and that did what we needed. https://www.mantisbt.org/demo.php https://www.mantisbt.org/demo.php Is there now some obvious reason to choose Bugzilla instead?