6 ms·

Open Source Bug Tracking

47 points by Pkeod 14y ago

finnh 14y ago
Does it support embedding images in tickets? For screenshots? If not, this is a kick-non-starter.
- shaggyfrog 14y ago
  Linking with SCMs is also a must-have, IMO. "Import existing data from XYZ" would also lower the bar for adoption.
- magic5227 14y ago
  Yes, you can drag and drop images, we're using GDrive API so each user gets 5gb free, but we can always add any other storage service.
  - finnh 14y ago
    ah, great. in that case it looks really nice! ps - from what I could see, none of your videos/images/text state that you can do this. I, at least, didn't feel safe taking it for granted that such functionality exists.
    - magic5227 14y ago
      yea tried to keep things simple for the video.
kennywinker 14y ago
Very nice. I've been using Redmine, and it's working but I can't really recommend it. Would love to see this. Kicked in some dough.
- eckyptang 14y ago
  Try trac. Redmine is a poor copy of Trac. Trac is a wonderful piece of software once you get used to it. Nothing can match the plugin model, reliability and extensibility of it. Name something else which we can customise, make client facing easily, have AD authentication working against, use for documentation, source tracking, ticket mangement and infrastructure management with an administration effort of 30 minutes a month at average, that costs $0?
  - debacle 14y ago
    Redmine has far and away more functionality than Trac.
    - eckyptang 14y ago
      That's one of the reasons we don't use it. Trac is a framework which just happens to have ticketing, wiki and source control modules. Redmine is a ticketing tool, wiki and source control browser which happens to have half a framework underneath it.
    - kirbez 14y ago
      Redmine could be extended to really functional business system (CRM, Help-desk, bookkeeping) using third party plugins and rich API
- Argorak 14y ago
  Have you had a look at ChiliProject? https://www.chiliproject.org/ https://www.chiliproject.org/ Its a Redmine Fork invested a lot of time into cleaning up the whole thing.
juanbyrge 14y ago
This is exactly what the world needs.
bobowzki 14y ago
Why not kickbug!
- magic5227 14y ago
  taken :(
bobowzki 14y ago
Why not kickbug!
nodata 14y ago
This is from the MusOpen guy. I'd like to better understand what they are aiming to do: bug/ticketing systems grow over time. Any new bug tracker will be simple. Starting from scratch is always simpler.
- magic5227 14y ago
  Basically the goal is to get something as polished as Jira/FogBugz, but make it free, add a nicer UI, and an API so people can extend it as they like. If we reach our goal it will be pretty well featured in comparison to other ticket systems, so the design should accomodate everything we want without getting too crazy, as we sketched this all out in advance.
coffeeaddicted 14y ago
The "Close, don't delete" feature reminds me of the sourceforge bugtracker. That has one very big disadvantage - you can't get completely rid of spam. Which is unfortunately becoming an increasing problem in some bugtrackers.
latchkey 14y ago
A long long time ago, I created an issue/bug tracker project with similar lofty goals. http://scarab.tigris.org/ http://scarab.tigris.org/ Not to discourage you, but this is a never ending project. There is a good reason why nobody has built a better bug tracker... it's nearly impossible to do so. There is an endless set of requirements that people must have before they will start to use one. You can certainly get a few smaller players to keep the lights on, but those smaller players will most likely just use Github or another site with more integration points. You can see it in the comments already with several 'non-starter' requirements. This ends up making the project larger and more complex over time, to the point that it becomes exactly what we already have with other projects. Either that or it will just stay a small player in an already saturated area. I wish you the best of luck with your project, I just fear that your method of using Kickstarter to try to fund it is a bad idea. $5k - fees isn't that much money. There's enough articles on HN about KS vaporware and this one is ripe for it. I think a better idea would be to spend a year working on it and then go for real funding once you have a great working prototype.
melicerte 14y ago
Just pledged. Now lets the world know we need OSS project like this.
boyter 14y ago
I have tried a lot of bug trackers and sadly this falls into the same group of looks interesting but I won't use. It looks to work the same way every other bug tracker out there works. I have been thinking of writing my own version one of these days which works the way I think a bug tracker should work. For anyone who wants an idea here is how I see it working. Three columns, similar to outlook. The far left with projects/users the middle with issues and the right with details of the issue. A single search box which intelligently picks relevant issues/projects/users based on what's typed and instantly displays the results. Clicking on a project or user displays issues assigned to that user or project. Clicking on the issue displays the details on the right pane. Add drag and drop file uploads, instant comments and you have something I feel is already more productive then any bug tracker I have used. I guess my biggest complaint is how hard it is to find bugs/issues in the system and jump between them. The above may solve that pain point. Its certainly a weekend project to implement.
- xmodem 14y ago
  That's a pretty cool idea, but I wouldn't go re-inventing the wheel. You could build that as a JIRA plugin quite easily.
- magic5227 14y ago
  Sounds like asana a bit, no?
sylvain_ 14y ago
I really understand the problem you are tackling : you haven't found a BugTracking system that works for your company. Especially because you are in the web development field so you know exactly what you want. But I think that the problem is not that "Some are great but expensive, others haven't changed in years, most are too complex and are re-hashes of the same product." The problem is that they have not been built for you. This is why there are so many bug tracking, to-do list and project management solutions. Savvy people aren't satisfied with what they found because it does not fit 100% with their ideal solution so they want a custom one. So they say: "Hey look what I've build! It's so much better than the others". It's true for you and maybe for some other people but it's not true in general. It's just that everyone wants a custom bugtracking, to-do list or project management app.
- jarofgreen 14y ago
  +1 Yes. I had an an old boss who did not grasp this principle and was convinced he would get rich writing a similar tool because all the other's where rubbish and not what he needed. He even talked to several other small business owners who felt the same and thus was convinced that he would sell to them fine. He didn't realise that when he showed them the actual tool they'd want something different ... Anyway, I left that company many years ago :-)
- mryan 14y ago
  > The problem is that they have not been built for you. As well as not being built for you, it was also not built by you. I believe NIH syndrome is responsible for the glut of half-finished programmer tools that litter the SaaS market. That's not to say that there is not room for another bug tracker, nor that there is anything wrong with a touch of NIH syndrome here and there.
  - sylvain_ 14y ago
    Yes, exactly. And I know what I'm talking about, I created my own project management app, half for fun, half to be completely tailored to me ;)
seltzered_ 14y ago
Look interesting, although I'd pay $$$ for a tool that somehow combined "trello" features with good bug tracking. I know fogbugz+trello sortof does this, and atlassian has some similar tools. I would've also paid $ for a kickstarter aimed at committing some usability/look-and-feel improvements to redmine.
milliams 14y ago
I've been very impressed with The Bug Genie (http://www.thebuggenie.com/ http://www.thebuggenie.com/) recently. It covers everything I need from a bug tracker and project management tool and is open source too.

47 points by Pkeod 14y ago

finnh 14y ago

Does it support embedding images in tickets? For screenshots? If not, this is a kick-non-starter.

shaggyfrog 14y ago
Linking with SCMs is also a must-have, IMO. "Import existing data from XYZ" would also lower the bar for adoption.
magic5227 14y ago
Yes, you can drag and drop images, we're using GDrive API so each user gets 5gb free, but we can always add any other storage service.
- finnh 14y ago
  ah, great. in that case it looks really nice! ps - from what I could see, none of your videos/images/text state that you can do this. I, at least, didn't feel safe taking it for granted that such functionality exists.
  - magic5227 14y ago
    yea tried to keep things simple for the video.

kennywinker 14y ago

Very nice. I've been using Redmine, and it's working but I can't really recommend it. Would love to see this. Kicked in some dough.

eckyptang 14y ago
Try trac. Redmine is a poor copy of Trac. Trac is a wonderful piece of software once you get used to it. Nothing can match the plugin model, reliability and extensibility of it. Name something else which we can customise, make client facing easily, have AD authentication working against, use for documentation, source tracking, ticket mangement and infrastructure management with an administration effort of 30 minutes a month at average, that costs $0?
- debacle 14y ago
  Redmine has far and away more functionality than Trac.
  - eckyptang 14y ago
    That's one of the reasons we don't use it. Trac is a framework which just happens to have ticketing, wiki and source control modules. Redmine is a ticketing tool, wiki and source control browser which happens to have half a framework underneath it.
  - kirbez 14y ago
    Redmine could be extended to really functional business system (CRM, Help-desk, bookkeeping) using third party plugins and rich API
Argorak 14y ago
Have you had a look at ChiliProject? https://www.chiliproject.org/ https://www.chiliproject.org/ Its a Redmine Fork invested a lot of time into cleaning up the whole thing.

juanbyrge 14y ago

This is exactly what the world needs.

bobowzki 14y ago

Why not kickbug!

magic5227 14y ago
taken :(

bobowzki 14y ago

Why not kickbug!

nodata 14y ago

This is from the MusOpen guy. I'd like to better understand what they are aiming to do: bug/ticketing systems grow over time. Any new bug tracker will be simple. Starting from scratch is always simpler.

magic5227 14y ago
Basically the goal is to get something as polished as Jira/FogBugz, but make it free, add a nicer UI, and an API so people can extend it as they like. If we reach our goal it will be pretty well featured in comparison to other ticket systems, so the design should accomodate everything we want without getting too crazy, as we sketched this all out in advance.

coffeeaddicted 14y ago

The "Close, don't delete" feature reminds me of the sourceforge bugtracker. That has one very big disadvantage - you can't get completely rid of spam. Which is unfortunately becoming an increasing problem in some bugtrackers.

latchkey 14y ago

A long long time ago, I created an issue/bug tracker project with similar lofty goals. http://scarab.tigris.org/ http://scarab.tigris.org/ Not to discourage you, but this is a never ending project. There is a good reason why nobody has built a better bug tracker... it's nearly impossible to do so. There is an endless set of requirements that people must have before they will start to use one. You can certainly get a few smaller players to keep the lights on, but those smaller players will most likely just use Github or another site with more integration points. You can see it in the comments already with several 'non-starter' requirements. This ends up making the project larger and more complex over time, to the point that it becomes exactly what we already have with other projects. Either that or it will just stay a small player in an already saturated area. I wish you the best of luck with your project, I just fear that your method of using Kickstarter to try to fund it is a bad idea. $5k - fees isn't that much money. There's enough articles on HN about KS vaporware and this one is ripe for it. I think a better idea would be to spend a year working on it and then go for real funding once you have a great working prototype.

melicerte 14y ago

Just pledged. Now lets the world know we need OSS project like this.

boyter 14y ago

I have tried a lot of bug trackers and sadly this falls into the same group of looks interesting but I won't use. It looks to work the same way every other bug tracker out there works. I have been thinking of writing my own version one of these days which works the way I think a bug tracker should work. For anyone who wants an idea here is how I see it working. Three columns, similar to outlook. The far left with projects/users the middle with issues and the right with details of the issue. A single search box which intelligently picks relevant issues/projects/users based on what's typed and instantly displays the results. Clicking on a project or user displays issues assigned to that user or project. Clicking on the issue displays the details on the right pane. Add drag and drop file uploads, instant comments and you have something I feel is already more productive then any bug tracker I have used. I guess my biggest complaint is how hard it is to find bugs/issues in the system and jump between them. The above may solve that pain point. Its certainly a weekend project to implement.

xmodem 14y ago
That's a pretty cool idea, but I wouldn't go re-inventing the wheel. You could build that as a JIRA plugin quite easily.
magic5227 14y ago
Sounds like asana a bit, no?

sylvain_ 14y ago

I really understand the problem you are tackling : you haven't found a BugTracking system that works for your company. Especially because you are in the web development field so you know exactly what you want. But I think that the problem is not that "Some are great but expensive, others haven't changed in years, most are too complex and are re-hashes of the same product." The problem is that they have not been built for you. This is why there are so many bug tracking, to-do list and project management solutions. Savvy people aren't satisfied with what they found because it does not fit 100% with their ideal solution so they want a custom one. So they say: "Hey look what I've build! It's so much better than the others". It's true for you and maybe for some other people but it's not true in general. It's just that everyone wants a custom bugtracking, to-do list or project management app.

jarofgreen 14y ago
+1 Yes. I had an an old boss who did not grasp this principle and was convinced he would get rich writing a similar tool because all the other's where rubbish and not what he needed. He even talked to several other small business owners who felt the same and thus was convinced that he would sell to them fine. He didn't realise that when he showed them the actual tool they'd want something different ... Anyway, I left that company many years ago :-)
mryan 14y ago
> The problem is that they have not been built for you. As well as not being built for you, it was also not built by you. I believe NIH syndrome is responsible for the glut of half-finished programmer tools that litter the SaaS market. That's not to say that there is not room for another bug tracker, nor that there is anything wrong with a touch of NIH syndrome here and there.
- sylvain_ 14y ago
  Yes, exactly. And I know what I'm talking about, I created my own project management app, half for fun, half to be completely tailored to me ;)

seltzered_ 14y ago

Look interesting, although I'd pay $$$ for a tool that somehow combined "trello" features with good bug tracking. I know fogbugz+trello sortof does this, and atlassian has some similar tools. I would've also paid $ for a kickstarter aimed at committing some usability/look-and-feel improvements to redmine.

milliams 14y ago

I've been very impressed with The Bug Genie (http://www.thebuggenie.com/ http://www.thebuggenie.com/) recently. It covers everything I need from a bug tracker and project management tool and is open source too.