6 ms·

I'm surprised GitHub is by far #1. I wonder if it's familiarity rather than preference. Github's minimal approach of using labels for everything is like Gmail's

by wting 13y ago

I'm surprised GitHub is by far #1. I wonder if it's familiarity rather than preference. Github's minimal approach of using labels for everything is like Gmail's tags over folders. I wish GitHub had a "This bug affects me" or +1 button so the comment history stays clean of "me too" responses.

erikb 13y ago
I also feel such a questionaire is mostly driven by experience not by preference. Not many people learn to know more then 2 or 3 trackers in their career.
- mooreds 13y ago
  Absolutely. How many people do a survey of these types of tools, let alone work deeply enough with a number of them to know the warts? I've been in the position to choose bug trackers for two companies I've worked for, and I still don't feel competent to vote.
- jchung 13y ago
  I question whether people need to learn more than 2 or 3 trackers over a career. Bug tracking tools are remarkably well developed. Once you find something that works, start battering bigger fish.
  - shardling 13y ago
    That attitude doesn't work for open source projects, where you need to worry about any barrier to pulling in new contributors.
columbo 13y ago
I've used a ton of bugtrackers, GitHub is the only one I've been able to hand to a non-techy client so they can create bugs. This has been a huge frustration for me when it comes to bug tracking. I have multiple clients who just aren't technical people and when they see the wall of options that bugzilla and mantis offer it causes them to give up and email me directly. I even tried vbulletin for awhile, but that had its own problems. GitHub (once you get past the signup) is perfect in this regard. Just open a ticket and then comment on it. I wish GitHub had more in regards to bug tracking, for example being able to create states (open, in progress, closed) as well as labels. These days I'm sure there are comparable solutions but having the issue system through github means one less service I need to track, which is also nice (client gets code, client has issue tracking, done). With all that said I wouldn't use github issue tracking for complex multi-stage applications where the environment is an important factor in the problem.
- shardling 13y ago
  I know mozilla has a drastically simplified interface for reporting Firefox bugs. Is that not an option in general bugzilla installations? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi
- jamesbritt 13y ago
  GitHub is the only one I've been able to hand to a non-techy client so they can create bugs. I was using Pivotal Tracker a few years ago for a large-ish project, and really wanted the client to use it. It didn't strike me as terribly hard for reasonably bright people, but I under-estimated habit and the degree of resentment some members on the client team had about their pet project being changed. Assorted attempts at education (I made a really nice screencast!) failed; I was still getting e-mail with Excel or Word docs attached. We finally came to an understanding and started using Google Docs. BTW, Github issues is not so bad. A key feature for me for any bug tracker is a Web API, something I can talk to using a command-line tool. I wrote such a thing for Pivotal Tracker (my Pivotal Slacker Ruby script, now abandoned) and later hacked up a program called GHissues to pull items from Github.
dkuntz2 13y ago
Having not used that many, I like GitHub's over BitBucket's because it has tagging and milestones, which are vastly more useful than some preset priority and type fields. GitHub's is a lot closer to how my brain works. It just seems funny to me that a company that also makes a bug tracking system has a really bad one coupled with it's version control hosting. It makes some sense, but it bugs me.

by wting 13y ago

erikb 13y ago

I also feel such a questionaire is mostly driven by experience not by preference. Not many people learn to know more then 2 or 3 trackers in their career.

mooreds 13y ago
Absolutely. How many people do a survey of these types of tools, let alone work deeply enough with a number of them to know the warts? I've been in the position to choose bug trackers for two companies I've worked for, and I still don't feel competent to vote.
jchung 13y ago
I question whether people need to learn more than 2 or 3 trackers over a career. Bug tracking tools are remarkably well developed. Once you find something that works, start battering bigger fish.
- shardling 13y ago
  That attitude doesn't work for open source projects, where you need to worry about any barrier to pulling in new contributors.

columbo 13y ago

I've used a ton of bugtrackers, GitHub is the only one I've been able to hand to a non-techy client so they can create bugs. This has been a huge frustration for me when it comes to bug tracking. I have multiple clients who just aren't technical people and when they see the wall of options that bugzilla and mantis offer it causes them to give up and email me directly. I even tried vbulletin for awhile, but that had its own problems. GitHub (once you get past the signup) is perfect in this regard. Just open a ticket and then comment on it. I wish GitHub had more in regards to bug tracking, for example being able to create states (open, in progress, closed) as well as labels. These days I'm sure there are comparable solutions but having the issue system through github means one less service I need to track, which is also nice (client gets code, client has issue tracking, done). With all that said I wouldn't use github issue tracking for complex multi-stage applications where the environment is an important factor in the problem.

shardling 13y ago
I know mozilla has a drastically simplified interface for reporting Firefox bugs. Is that not an option in general bugzilla installations? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi
jamesbritt 13y ago
GitHub is the only one I've been able to hand to a non-techy client so they can create bugs. I was using Pivotal Tracker a few years ago for a large-ish project, and really wanted the client to use it. It didn't strike me as terribly hard for reasonably bright people, but I under-estimated habit and the degree of resentment some members on the client team had about their pet project being changed. Assorted attempts at education (I made a really nice screencast!) failed; I was still getting e-mail with Excel or Word docs attached. We finally came to an understanding and started using Google Docs. BTW, Github issues is not so bad. A key feature for me for any bug tracker is a Web API, something I can talk to using a command-line tool. I wrote such a thing for Pivotal Tracker (my Pivotal Slacker Ruby script, now abandoned) and later hacked up a program called GHissues to pull items from Github.

dkuntz2 13y ago

Having not used that many, I like GitHub's over BitBucket's because it has tagging and milestones, which are vastly more useful than some preset priority and type fields. GitHub's is a lot closer to how my brain works. It just seems funny to me that a company that also makes a bug tracking system has a really bad one coupled with it's version control hosting. It makes some sense, but it bugs me.