Recommends bug tracking system

Question

I work on a web site with only a few other programmers. We've been using Fogbugz for issue tracking, and while we like it, it is expensive, and isn't exactly suited to our needs--we'd really like the users of our web site to be able to access the bug lists, rather than submitting bugs blindly with no way of knowing whether an issue has already been reported.

What bug tracking systems do people recommend that allow public searches? We are looking at Bugzilla, but the bug reporting screen has a lot of unnecessary stuff, creating what we think may be to much of a barrier for bug reporting. We'd like to make things as easy as possible on users who are reporting bugs--ideally, they we'd like them to be able to report bugs without even registering an account, although would only be a bonus. Also, the cheaper the better, although we will pay for good software if it is a significant improvement over what we can get for free.

Answer 1

Take a look at Trac! It's free, light-weight, web-based interface (of-course you can install it on a local server), has tons of plugins to customize it to your needs.

Few plugins that will make it work as you have mentioned

• TracAccountManager : This plugin allows users to register on your site before they can post bugs. (Also See: 'anonymous account' below)
• webadmin : Allows you to configure trac using the web-interface instead of the command line trac-admin command. (Built in as of Trac 0.11.)

Permissions
Apart from that you can customize permissions as per your requirement. For example: you can set only TICKET_VIEW, and TICKET_CREATE for users who register online.

Anonymous account/Guest account
Trac has a special account (user-name) named "anonymous*, people who are not logged in are assigned this username. If you do not want users to register to create Ticket, you may assign TICKET_VIEW and TICKET_CREATE permissions for "anonymous" account. (I prefer to only set XXXXX_VIEW permissions to this account.)

Bug report/Ticket fields
You can also modify/add/delete ticket(bug report) components (field) as per your requirements. Specify default values for fields, so that developers/users are saved from filling each and every field.

Email Notification
Setting up mail notifications is as easy as editing the trac.ini file under the conf folder under your Trac project folder. Just fill in your server IP/address, username, field. Customize other fields as per your taste.

Other features provided by Trac

• Integrated wiki. Yes! You have a full-blown wiki as part of trac. It's great for creating documentation.
• Customized reports/query: You can create custom query, visually (no need to type, although that's an option) and save them for later use. A query/report is nothing more than a search for bug/ticket list.
• Integration with version control systems: By default Trac supports Subversion. you can browse source online, view visual diffs, view commit logs, and a host of other cool stuff. (We are using GitPlugin to interface it with git)

All these tasks are very simple to do on Trac, (no matter how difficult I make them sound :) )

SideNote
There are myriads of Trac plugins, allowing you to change the complete UI layout/colors, adding charting capabilities and what not. Visit TracHacks website for a comprehensive list of 'hacks' (plugins) available for Trac.

Answer 2

Personally, I like Trac. It is not too complicated, so normal users will actual be able to enter and search for bugs, and it does its job.

Answer 3

You might take a look at TRAC. Although users do have to have an account (I believe) it is free and pretty 'light-weight', and yes you can search tickets. Our company uses it for some of its projects.

Answer 4

At our company we are using Trac, mostly because it integrates well with SVN and Hudson. It's pretty basic functionality-wise (no real workflow functions to speak of), but works well for us. We're not running it on a public webserver, but I've seen a lot of other projects who are.

Answer 5

You should have a look at Target Process it's free for teams of up to 6 people. It also provides awesome Agile project management features. Yeah can configure it to pretty much any Agile development process.

Answer 6

See what-bug-tracking-software-do-you-use for previous question on this topic. This should provide some potential trackers that meet your public search requirement.

Our company uses open source Roundup - which can be publicly accessible and is very flexible/configurable. Non-free (in most cases) Jira also has a good reputation, and I think it allows anonymous access.

Answer 7

Check out Redmine. It has issue tracking, repository viewer, forums, wiki, cross project issue references, etc..

Currently ongoing implementations are to create plugins to support agile/Scrum procedures.

Answer 8

If you want to try Trac out, I recommend getting the packaged distro from BitNami, who provide a complete implementtaion including web server etc. that you can simply unzip and run without interferring with any other servers you may be running. They also package the Mantis tracker, which you should also consider.

Answer 9

Check Lighthouse at http://lighthouseapp.com/. Just give it a look-see for features. Worked well for our team at one point.

Answer 10

If you are Windows shop take a look at BugTracker.net. Its OSS, windows centric and easy to set up and modify if you have any experience with ASP. Not fancy but we have never had any problems with it.

Answer 11

Mantis is quite good. Offers public access and is very configurable.

Answer 12

Take a look at TeamSupport.com. We use it and have been very happy with it.

Answer 13

Have a look at Gemini from www.countersoft.com We used it in my last company and it performed really well. It's also easy to introduce to users who may not be using something like it currently.

Answer 14

http://www.countersoft.com has Gemini with a free 5 user license.

Answer 15

I doubt a tracker system is something you really want. To me, you are looking for something simple for the users and you have the ability to view their comments, bugs and thoughts, I would highly recommend you to try solutions like user voice that it embeds a feedback button at the sidebar, a real world example is http://nerddinner.com/ (you can see the feedback button on the right side). Certainly you can write some custom code to do the same thing or if you are using applications like drupal, wordpress, then there are modules available ready. This approach is more user friendly and easy to manage.

Answer 16

I recommend Bugzilla!

I think Bugzilla is by far the best tool, it allows you to track your bugs by product, version, environment, etc, etc. It is fast, and easy to install. Bugzilla is minded for 100% bug tracking, it is not a Swiss tool as Trac or many other bug tracking and everything software. Bugzilla is serious bug tracking.

Just download VMplayer (free) and download a bugzilla image ready to work from ALM Works

The image contains a Linux, MySQL, Apache and Bugzilla ready to play on any machine.

You can have a running bugzilla in less than 5 minutes.

Hope it helps.

Answer 17

I think YouTrack is just what you need. For the external reporters, it features on instant issue reporting, and integration with OpenID that reduces the time spent on registration. You can configure the permissions for the 'external users group' to provide them with the read-only access to the existing issues, plus it has per-issue security, so you can restrict the access to non-public data even in public projects. YouTrack is also very easy-to-use for the developer teams. It provides the complete keyboard support, query-based issue search and batch modification commands.

Answer 18

I can recommend this nice product - http://bontq.com Me & my team enjoy using it. Good luck.