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I respectfully disagree regarding Fogbugz vs. GitHub issues. I used FogBugz for about 6 years in a major client project (a successful SaaS product). We used Fo

I respectfully disagree regarding Fogbugz vs. GitHub issues. I used FogBugz for about 6 years in a major client project (a successful SaaS product). We used FogCreek's hosted solution and were pretty heavy users: different projects, milestones, feature requests, user communication, etc. However, we were unhappy with FogBugz. The UI always felt clunky and slow to navigate, it felt like we were battling FB rather than getting help from it. In particular, milestone / release management and issue grouping were painful. Then late last year we moved our repos to GH, and decided to look for another issue management system. We evaluated several: JIRA sucked hard imho, JetBrains YouTrack was my favorite full-featured product. But then we decided to give GH issue management a try. It is minimalist and surely lacked some features, but hey, if it could handle our needs, the simplicity would be a huge plus. A few months later, _everyone_ in the team is thrilled: devs, testers, support personnel. Using milestones and labels we have been able to manage more people and more work on GH (we're growing) with less hassle. It feels much friendlier than FogBugz. Now whenever I create / solve / assign / organize issues, I feel happy, whereas before it was a dreaded chore. YMMV of course, but I wanted to give my 2c since I do have a lot of experience with both issue managers.

6ren 13y ago
Just a nit on GH issues: email vs web don't mix. Email formatting isn't rendered properly online (line breaks, "> " quoting) - and you can't edit an issue/comment online if you originally mailed it in (it's type is email, and that's it). Editing online is incredibly slow on small machines (zenmode is much faster, but you can't preview).
- gustavo_duarte 13y ago
  Agreed, email is clunky. Have you used the GitHub mobile apps though? I find it's a decent way to keep tabs on issues, add comments, etc., when one is away from a bigger computer. I see that as a big plus for GH.
davidp 13y ago
When using github, do you keep all of your code in a single repo? If not, have you found any solutions to the "fragmentation" problem where it's hard to get a big picture view due to issues being scattered across different repos? We're looking for solutions for that at my workplace. I haven't used bitbucket for larger projects yet, any insights there also appreciated.
- mcrider 13y ago
  You can use the organization issues dashboard. Its almost impossible to find though (you just reminded me of it and I had to hunt down how to access it: https://github.com/organizations/[Username]/dashboard/issues https://github.com/organizations/[Username]/dashboard/issues.
  - Jd 13y ago
    Sadly doesn't provide any filtering on tags, which is the only way to assign priority. In fact, all I really get is a list of all open issues.
- Jd 13y ago
  This is a huge problem for us also, and I've considered moving things over to Jira several times over the past couple weeks because of it. The only quasi-solution I've found is to feed multiple repos into a single chat room in Hipchat so people can get some idea of progress. More broadly though, I'm quite dissatisfied with GH issues (UI, poor search, clunky milestones, no burn charts, etc.).
  - gustavo_duarte 13y ago
    I understand the frustration with GH limitations (no burn charts and hardly any reporting). For us, the minimalism ended up working in harmony with our process, but I can see situations where it wouldn't. The UI and milestones, though, I think are good. JIRA is to me the king of clunky. I've used it in 3 projects over the years and evaluated it last year, and I've been pretty disappointed with it. To borrow from another comment here, it has a bit of a Bugzilla feel, like it just grew and grew, and you have tons of fields and features, but they're poorly designed and put together. A bit of a mess, to put it bluntly. FogBugz has a similar feel to me. I encourage you to check out JetBrains' YouTrack. I never used it in a project, but a couple days evaluating gave me a good impression. Good luck with your search.
gcb0 13y ago
I may be totally off... But sound like you were trying to use several features in fogbugz just because they were there... And then liked best the one that did not give you so much hope for you to hang yourself
JonoBB 13y ago
The part that really irks me about BitBucket issues is that you can't reassign the issue to someone else without editing the header record. This applies to some of the other issue fields as well, and just seems bizarre. We wanted to move from GitHub to BitBucket, but after a day of trying their issue tracker, we gave up.

6ren 13y ago

Just a nit on GH issues: email vs web don't mix. Email formatting isn't rendered properly online (line breaks, "> " quoting) - and you can't edit an issue/comment online if you originally mailed it in (it's type is email, and that's it). Editing online is incredibly slow on small machines (zenmode is much faster, but you can't preview).

gustavo_duarte 13y ago
Agreed, email is clunky. Have you used the GitHub mobile apps though? I find it's a decent way to keep tabs on issues, add comments, etc., when one is away from a bigger computer. I see that as a big plus for GH.

davidp 13y ago

When using github, do you keep all of your code in a single repo? If not, have you found any solutions to the "fragmentation" problem where it's hard to get a big picture view due to issues being scattered across different repos? We're looking for solutions for that at my workplace. I haven't used bitbucket for larger projects yet, any insights there also appreciated.

mcrider 13y ago
You can use the organization issues dashboard. Its almost impossible to find though (you just reminded me of it and I had to hunt down how to access it: https://github.com/organizations/[Username]/dashboard/issues https://github.com/organizations/[Username]/dashboard/issues.
- Jd 13y ago
  Sadly doesn't provide any filtering on tags, which is the only way to assign priority. In fact, all I really get is a list of all open issues.
Jd 13y ago
This is a huge problem for us also, and I've considered moving things over to Jira several times over the past couple weeks because of it. The only quasi-solution I've found is to feed multiple repos into a single chat room in Hipchat so people can get some idea of progress. More broadly though, I'm quite dissatisfied with GH issues (UI, poor search, clunky milestones, no burn charts, etc.).
- gustavo_duarte 13y ago
  I understand the frustration with GH limitations (no burn charts and hardly any reporting). For us, the minimalism ended up working in harmony with our process, but I can see situations where it wouldn't. The UI and milestones, though, I think are good. JIRA is to me the king of clunky. I've used it in 3 projects over the years and evaluated it last year, and I've been pretty disappointed with it. To borrow from another comment here, it has a bit of a Bugzilla feel, like it just grew and grew, and you have tons of fields and features, but they're poorly designed and put together. A bit of a mess, to put it bluntly. FogBugz has a similar feel to me. I encourage you to check out JetBrains' YouTrack. I never used it in a project, but a couple days evaluating gave me a good impression. Good luck with your search.

gcb0 13y ago

I may be totally off... But sound like you were trying to use several features in fogbugz just because they were there... And then liked best the one that did not give you so much hope for you to hang yourself

JonoBB 13y ago

The part that really irks me about BitBucket issues is that you can't reassign the issue to someone else without editing the header record. This applies to some of the other issue fields as well, and just seems bizarre. We wanted to move from GitHub to BitBucket, but after a day of trying their issue tracker, we gave up.