Monday, 27 July 2009
Beta release imminent?
If I get a bit of a tailwind, I may actually be able to release a SkinnyDebbie beta this week.
The most difficult (and fun) packages are done; it’s now down to some nitty-gritty and (honestly) tedious detail stuff.
There’s been a lot of refactoring, so I am expecting a reasonable crop of bugs in the first beta. But I’m not expecting any showstoppers … or at least nothing that can’t be fixed quickly.
Monday, 13 July 2009
Forges and bugreporting
I’ve been looking into forge s/w to integrate stuff, bug reporting in particular. I’m considering only stuff that runs with PHP+MySQL or PHP+SQLite. Here’s a shortlist of forges I’ve found:
Forge
The following are full forges.
Pass?
Fusion Forge
- a GForge fork
- for better or worse, very Sourceforge-like
InDefero
- self-admitted Goolge Code clone (or thereabouts)
- ironically uses Google Groups as a forum
- uses SQLite instead of MySQL
- offers hosted service as well
- looks like a bit of a pain to install
- biggest sin: users cannot specify the kind of issue they are registering (enhancement, bug, etc.)
Fail
Codendi
- is GPL but isn’t GPL
- the site claims the ‘pro’ edition is GPL2 and “100% open source” but there seems to be no way to download it without a paid license.
- WTF: “Codendi is compatible with the operating system Linux Red Hat Enterprise 5.x or CentOS” (from here)
GForge
- no longer OSS
LibreSource
- uses Java :-(
Savane
- uses Perl :-(
Trac
- uses Python :-(
Bug reporting
The following provide only bug reporting.
Non hosted
All require MySQL.
The Bug Genie
Comprehensive. A little too comprehensive. Before anyone can submit a bug, a product needs to be set up with a version, a build, etc.etc.etc. Looks and feels good though.
eTraxis
Makes pretty metrics graphs and (I think) nice change logs. UI not so inviting. Last release was May 30 2009 and previous releases were about once every two weeks. I have no idea what’s happened between May 30 and July 13 (today).
Eventum
From the MySQL people. Seems very straight. Last update was January 20th 2009, and updates are slowing noticeably. PHP 4.1.0 is give as a requirement … no indication if PHP 5 breaks it.
Flypray
A bit simple (no built-in changelogs) but seems easy to use. The UI is almost inviting. Last update was 01 May 2009 with previous updates about 2x a year. Allow anonymous bug reports.
Mantis Bug Tracker
Produces changelog and roadmap. UI a tiny but more inviting than eTraxis. Last release was Jun 08 2009 with previous releases about two months apart.
phpBugTracker
Hasn’t been updated since Jan 30 2008. The previous release was Sep 14 2005. I fear it is dead.
Hosted
The biggest problem with free hosted services is that they don’t allow anonymous host or permit more than 1 to 3 members. That means regular users can’t use it to submit bugs … but maybe that’s a good thing.
Izzues.
- You can export your data into CSV or SQLite, but the CSV at least isn’t that useful.
- I can’t figure out how they make money.