How do you maintain a community change log?

Question

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a change log / features request program my client can use to see where I am at with the development. Trac looks sexy (http://trac.edgewall.org/) but too complex for what I need.

Very simply, the client needs to be able to order tasks and for us to be able to sort them and keep a record of everything that is going on.

We could update a static file or something, but that seems a bit err time consuming and not systematic enough.

What do you use?

Answer 1

Basecamp is a pretty slick project management solution: http://basecamphq.com

I've used this or trac depending on the project. My 2 cents :)

Answer 2

As a bug-tracker, I am using Mantis :

• it is not too hard to use (our clients are using it OK, even if they are not programmers)
• it does the job ; tracking bugs, at least, with what functionnalities you could expect
• it is written in PHP, which is great if you are yourself working with PHP : it means you already have servers that can host it, and that you will know how to solve problems if you encounter some (that's one of my problems with Trac : I don't know anything about Python, to, when there's a problem, I'l literally stuck... )
• also, if you take a look at their blog, you will notice there have been some new versions this years, which means it's still under development (which is better than using an old tool noone cares about anymore ^^ )

There's a demo available, btw.

Answer 3

I'd use Trac even for a small project since it allows you to disable most of the advanced features if you don't need them.

First, whole pages aren't shown at all if you remove a user's permission to view them. So if you e.g. don't like the "Roadmap" page, just get rid of it. There is a whole list of possible permissions in the trac help.

Second, Trac even allows removing ticket fields like priorities, resolutions, severities by just deleting all possible options for them in the administration panel.

Using these tricks, you can simplify your Trac a lot but still keep the usefull stuff.