What is your bug/task tracking tool?

Question

This is a placeholder for overviews of bug/task tracking systems.

What i want to do here is:

1. List all tools used in the industry (please provide a link to the tool discussed)
2. Gather opinions on each tool (please back up your opinion with facts i.e provide advantages and disadvantages)

Please put each tool in separate answer and please make it community owned wiki to give an option to add/edit to as many people as possible.

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Related posts:

What is your tool for version control (FAQ)
Free/Cheap Task/Bug Management software
What bug tracking software do you use?

Answer 1

FogBugz

I'm not just sucking up to Joel, it really does rock.

Answer 2

We use Team Foundation Server on the current project. I think the setup of it is much too manual and it has its quirks, but it works at least for this project. Hopefully someone gives a detailed description of Mercury's TestDirector, it was the easiest to use for me but it's been a while.

Here's the Official Site

Answer 3

Bugzilla

Features:

• Advanced Search
• File and Process bugs by email as well as web
• Time Tracking
• Multiple formats for notifications (RSS, ICal)
• Private Attachments and comments

Plus:

• Powerful
• flexible
• configurable
• fairly easy to install and update
• open source / free (libre) software
• stable, robust, long lived
• written in perl, so if you have local perl experience it's really easy to manage and update

Minus:

• performance can be slow if you don't run mod_perl
• Advanced search UI can make non-techies poop in their pants from fear
• generates a metric crapload of email by default
• About as pretty as a dumptruck
• written in perl, so if you have no local perl experience, you'll have a hard time extending it (and doing funky stuff like getting mod_perl running, etc)

Links:

• Features
• Stable Version Download
• FAQ
• Installation
• Docs
• Releases

Answer 4

TeamTrack

Answer 5

TestTrackPro .

Answer 6

Mantis

Answer 7

Trac (http://trac.edgewall.org/)

It's sleek, fast, free and has subversion integration.

In another answer, reefnet_alex said about it: The browse source is excellent and having a Wiki built in is pretty useful. It's lightweight and easily customizable. On the down side, it's jack of all trades master of none.

Answer 8

We used to work with Bugzilla, but thought we'd give Fogbugz a try ... the difference is night and day. We're way more productive with all the features built right into FogBugz (scheduling, release prediction, rss feeds), and soon we'll even be opening up a community forum and wiki to share important information with our user community.

Answer 9

My current client uses Google Docs which is surprisingly good to allow non-technical people to collaborate on the bugs list as soon as you set up some basic ground rules (like marking comments with your initals and the date).

We use EPAM PMC suite which is all-powerful RUP-oriented tool and occasionally Bugzilla and Trac on more agile projects.

Answer 10

We use TFS for some reason!

Answer 11

BugTracker.NET: GPL

Answer 12

It may well be worth a look at Fixx. I've done some work with the developers who created this, and they really know their stuff and create nice looking products. It's developing rapidly and seems to be very popular with their customers.

Answer 13

We used Team Foundation Server at work. I like it. At home I use Subversion with ankhsvn for VS.

Answer 14

Gemini by CounterSoft. Not too complicated to use, it's not perfect but it's pretty decent stuff.

Answer 15

Used to use RMTrack, now I use FogBugz. in my opinion RMTrack was superior because it supports customizing work flows, so you can get cases to escalate the way you want them to. We use loads of hacks with FogBugz to make it do what we want. We've esentially got a person who looks at it all day, making sure cases are with the right person to deal with them... we didn't need that with RMTrack.

Answer 16

I also use Google Docs for small projects I'm involved in. We've also found Google Notebook to be quite efficient. They may not have the scheduling features large groups need, but for sending snippets of code or quick design docs it works really well.

Answer 17

Jira is a good one.

Answer 18

http://www.countersoft.com/

Gemini project tracking. It's free for 5 users, pretty decent.

Answer 19

We use JIRA, which also has a great Eclipse plugin

Answer 20

We use OnTime which is a great tool and has both web and Windows clients, Visual Studio integration, accompanying web services, a customer facing portal, workflow support (which is essential to a good defect tool) and a lot of other fun stuff. It's commercial, so probably not up your alley if you're looking for something open source.

Answer 21

I have a yellow legal pad that has all mine on it. The benefit of a team of one is no communication paths!

Answer 22

I've used the open source Mantis Bug Tracker for a medium-sized project, and although it didn't have many source-control integration features, the hability to handle custom fields, the workflow and reporting features worked awesome with my team.

And it's very clean code IMHO. Shouldn't be very difficult to extend and add/modify features.

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It is easily integrated with Eclipse with the Mylyn-Mantis connector

Answer 23

I use SourceForge Enterprise Edition that is free under 10 dev. It's a VMWare with SVN, bug tracker, wiki and task manager. Very simple to use.

Answer 24

Here's another vote for Mantis.

@Camilo DR, source-control integration is available. I've got my mantis setup so that every time I do a SVN commit, the patch file is attached to the relevant issue along with the SVN comments being added as a note. I find this provides excellent history and lets you easily tie how an issue is resolved from the business side, to how it's resolved in the actual implementation. Here's the Tutorial that I used to get this up and running. (It's definitely worth the effort.)

Answer 25

My company uses JIRA and Quality Center along with a plugin to link both from Go2Group called JaM. The reason for both is partly the cost of Quality Center, but also because QC doesn't have the right workflows we need for the developers.

JIRA integrates with Subversion and other versioning systems so you can look at a bug and easily see the commits that fixed the bug, etc. It's really great being able to extend the software as well.

Answer 26

I have used TestTrackPro by Seapine. Overall it worked quite well. I was able to set up custom work flows. The reporting does leave a lot to be desired however. Once I switched from using the native database to a SQL database I was able to write my own reports. There are much more powerful open source bug trackers out there and I would recommend one of those instead of TTP. Currently I am using JIRA and am quite happy with it.

Answer 27

One client I work for uses Basecamp for all client, project, time, and task tracking.

Answer 28

We're using Telelogic Synergy, and I wouldn't recommend it because it is not fast enough and not user friendly:

For instance, you can save a report, which is made of a query and a format. Then you have to erase and re-create your report you want to change either the query or the format.

For the speed, it could be due to the server we use (I have no detail), but the HTML page to display one CR weights more that 680 Kb, which make it long to display when you're away from the server.

EDIT: Also it does not differentiate between Defect and Change Request. A Defect reports an incident in the software while a Change Request is a request to fix the problem in a given version. Several Change Requests can be tied to the same Defect.

Answer 29

At my day job (essentially a 100% Microsoft shop) we use Windows SharePoint Services. Not Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, which costs, but the free-with-Windows-Server version.

Answer 30

BugHost.

Answer 31

Rational ClearQuest

I hate it.

Answer 32

At one of my old jobs I used a custom hacked together coldfusion frankenstein that had been mutated over several years by a variety of programmers... after that almost anything is easier to use / better.

Previously I've used dotproject (free and open source).

My current job uses Jira (not free).

Both are good bug-task-project tracking tools for internal use. I haven't used either as customer facing tools so I'm not sure how they would work in that environment.

Answer 33

I love Assembla. We use it at work and I use it on a few side projects of my own. Integrated SVN, Tickets, Tasks, Milestones (Or you can just use Trac, which is also integrated).

The fewer things I have to host and maintain myself, the better. I like Trac a lot, but the installation and maintenance are a PITA.

Answer 34

We currently use Fogbugz. It is actually fairly nice and easy to use. Really good for small groups. We are looking using TFS atm but are not sure we want to with some of its quirks.

Answer 35

We currently use JIRA and Confluence. A nice mix with moderately good integration in our setup.

As a not very much a coder I've found JIRA relatively easy to administer, and the developers like it's 'zilla ness.

Answer 36

hands down, bugzilla has been the best most configurable most accessible tool for bug tracking that I've had the pleasure to use. In a few cases, where it was lacking in some functionality, such as integration into visual source safe an attributing a particular bug to a particular build number, file and line number, I was able to add this functionality into our particular instance of bugzilla at a previous company I worked for.

Answer 37

My company uses Request Tracker for support tickets. That is, client-reported bug tracking. It has some nice email integration features, and is highly configurable. Also open source, which was a requirement. (Of coruse, we also happen to use Bugzilla for internal bug tracking, so some RT tickets get double-logged, but that's not a terrible thing.)

Answer 38

Test Track Pro.

http://www.seapine.com/

I would not describe it as my favorite, as its interface isn't going to win any awards in my book, but it seems to be able to support a pretty dynamic workflow if that is something important to you.

Answer 39

I was inspired by FogBugz and Bugzilla and I made a custom bug tracking tool for my diploma thesis, which was used then in the first company I worked for.

Answer 40

I use Redmine for general project stuff and Flyspray if I only need a bugtracker.

Answer 41

I use a open source Domino web application called Bug Tracker.

It is available for free here:

http://www.openntf.org/Projects/pmt.nsf/ProjectLookup/BugTracker

It has some quirks, but it is free and works well....

Answer 42

Mantis again, with some custom modifications to cope internal requirements.

It's code is so "hackable" that I don't regret about work with it.

It will be better with the upcoming Plugins.

Answer 43

We use JIRA for our bugtracking tool.

Answer 44

I currently use the Mantis bugtracker. It's small and simple, but it has some great features like custom fields, very easy creation of new projects based on other projects (can copy settings, fields, user setup.)

I used Joel's FogBugz at my last day job, it's awesome. Bugs always have owners in his system, so nothing falls through the cracks. One issue I had was that when a bug was resolved, it went back to the person that opened the bug- it would be nice to have the ability to send the bug to a specified person (eg. QA department) rather than defaulting to whoever opened it.

Answer 45

Where I'm working, we use CA's Clarity for just about everything from financials to project management to bug tracking. Ugh.

The interface is ok, but it's slow and doesn't allow for easy batch entry/edit. I find it complete and total overkill, plus, because the whole company uses it, individual teams are unable to tweak it's configuration to suit their projects.

On the side, I'm floating between a couple products right now, and this post is giving me some insight into the tools out there, so thanks everyone for that.

Answer 46

Version control: Compuware TrackRecord

Task/Bug Management: Mercury TestDirector

I think we're using an older version of TrackRecord than the one listed on Compuware's site.. I'm really not impressed with TrackRecord. TestDirector is a pretty nice tool. It's easy to customize process work flows and define roles. It's pretty easy to script it for additional flexibility as well.

Answer 47

We're using redmine at the moment. Integrated bug tracking/task-tracking, wiki, forums, filestore, svn & other integration.

Very similar to Trac (which we trialled before), but more suited to a multi-project/multi-scm environment.

Answer 48

Eventum here.

Answer 49

Check out Redmine. It has the look and feel of Trac plus

• Multiple projects support
• Flexible role based access control.
• Flexible issue tracking system
• Gantt chart and calendar
• News, documents & files management
• Feeds & email notifications.
• Per project wiki
• Per project forums
• Simple time tracking functionality
• Custom fields for issues, projects and users
• SCM integration (SVN, CVS, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar and Darcs)
• Multiple LDAP authentication support
• User self-registration support
• Multilanguage support
• Multiple databases support

Answer 50

We use MKS Integrity Manager (+ Source Integrity as our scm) and I hate it. It's main features are complicated usage, slowness and a big love affair with "confirm" dialogs. If someone in your company wants to deploy that, run away quickly...

Answer 51

No one has mentioned BugTracker.NET, personally I feel this to be quite good and free!

Answer 52

I've used Eventum to good effects. It is made by the nice folks of MySQL. It has some nice user-support features, which are not available in other, pure development-oriented, tools.

http://eventum.mysql.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

In my current project we use bugzilla, but I don't like it that much. Mantis is very nice, specially because of the work flow.

Answer 53

We used to work with Mantis, then went to JIRA (Enterprise Edition). I've also worked with Bugzilla and redmine

Answer 54

We use VisionProject visionproject we use it for customer support and internal development. (It has features to support scrum)

Answer 55

In our company we are using Polarion, an ALM solution that connects change management (task/bug tracking), wiki, version control (Subversion) and optionally also requirements management and build management.

Our company actually is Polarion Software, but we are using our own product not because we have to, but because we like to - making it the best for ourselves hopefully means making it the best for other users as well.

While addressing the highest ALM disciplines, Polarion also comes in a flavor called Track & Wiki, a rich-featured tracker and wiki integration at an affordable price. There was also a completely free tracker edition (without wiki) but that one is no longer maintained.

If somebody here ever tried Polarion and has something to say on why they prefer it to another tool or vice versa, I will be happy to know.

My reasons to use Polarion (from the user point of view) include:

• It is integrated, all-in-one solution
• It is easy to use, configure and maintain
• It has an Eclipse plugin as well as some for other IDEs
• It is based on open standards and technologies
• It is deeply integrated with Subversion, no proprietary data storage
• No lock-in, all the data visible live and ready to be manipulated in SVN repository (XML)

Answer 56

I'm using Eventum and find its not as complicated as bugzilla, also free and has a nice UI that doesn't scare the living daylights out of non-techies.

Why is Eventum not mentionend more often here or further up the top? Anything I've missed that makes not so popular ?

Answer 57

Wish I'd found Eventum when we were searching. :-/

We wound up writing our own; even simpler than Eventum. But it took plenty of hours.

http://www.archerfishonline.com

Would love some feedback.

Answer 58

We use Eventum version 2.1.1. The key advantages of using it that we found are:

• It was very easy to integrate with our corporate LDAP tree.
• It is easy enough to use that we could get our business users in there to help track and prioritize work.
• It has support for multiple projects and moving items between projects
• Eventum's email integration allowed us to track conversations around particular items as a side effect of normal email discussions (in other words, someone replies to an item sent by the system and that email is tracked as notes on the item)
• Integration with Subversion allowed us to track and view commit data from the item.

We've had an excellent experience with this software, after moving over from a highly expensive proprietary product. I highly recommend it.

Answer 59

Rational ClearQuest. Probably the worst source code control system ever designed. Practically unusable.

Answer 60

We also use JIRA. It's very easy to use, and also quite flexible, in that we started off using it just to track issues for software, and now use also it for hardware, testing and documentation. It helps that you pay for a site license, so are not limited to a particular number of users.

Answer 61

FogBugz

Answer 62

We use Intervals: http://www.myintervals.com/

It is a bug/task tracking tool built by our web development agency to track software projects. So it is ideal for other developers.

Answer 63

We use InTask (www.InTaskPro.com) since 2005 Very good tool - Fast, great modern UI, Multi user/Multi project, document versioning and lots more features. You can download free edition from: www.intaskpro.com

Cons: It's not web based - some people think it's important (i'm not!)

Answer 64

BugTracker.Net! It is great, source code provided, does many of the same things that FogBugz does.

Answer 65

Philippe, your complaints of slow and non friendly with regard to Telelogic Synergy explains why IBM brought it!

Answer 66

SharePoint with the Bug Database template. Simple, free(ish), extensible.

Answer 67

We've been very happy with TeamSupport.com.

Answer 68

I'm really amazed nobody has mentioned 'unfuddle'.

It has SVN and git integration, time tracking, notebooks, milestones, tickets, messages, RSS, iCal, File Attachments, SSL and more.

The simplest plan is free, the rest of the plans are between $9 and $99.

It's not a high end tool for large and complex projects but it's a great tool for small or medium teams working on let's say web development projects.

I love the tool!

Answer 69

redmine here...

it's really simple and easy to set up and use...

Answer 70

We use JTrac

Answer 71

BugNET (http://www.bugnetproject.com/). Works OK for small->medium sized projects. Been using it for 1-2 years.

Answer 72

Jira. Has some usability issues but coming from ClearQuest its fantastic :)

Answer 73

I havent used this personally, but it looks awesome: JetBrains Charisma...still in "beta" mode.

1. Features list
2. Example
3. Try Out!

Answer 74

+1 for Gemini from CounterSoft. A great product at a relatively cheap price.

Answer 75

We use JIRA in conjunction with a desktop JIRA Client, which adds Outlook-like UI, desktop specific features like drag'n'drop, offline work etc.

Answer 76

We are using informup tracking tool ( http://www.informup.com ) Personally I really like it because it is very simple and very powerfull

Advantages: Web Based (.net) Simple and powerfull Has almost all the feature you need (good dashbard, email notification, customized workflow etc...) PRICE is very low compare to other tools we checked Include basic requirement management, test management, bug tracking and even task (although the task part should be improved:-))

Disadvantges (I found for your company): Only one direction for source control integeration

Answer 77

We are using informup (http://www.informup.com ). we are 30-40 in the company using it and it is very great tool for small - mid size group including very good dashboard, customized fields, customized workflow, emai lnotification etc... we are managing our requirements, tests cases and of course bugs in it. Really easy to use and maintainance. In the past I used Test director, bugzilla and few more small bug tracking and really love this tool especially because you get the best solution for a very cheap price!!!

Thanks:-)

Answer 78

Lighthouse. Integrates well with Beanstalk, which we use for our Subversion repository.

I am currently testing the desktop client Lighthouse Keeper for the Mac. Looks nice, though I'm not sure it's worth the hassle. Different story with Cornerstone, the SVN client we use - worth every penny! I really recommend that to all SVN/Mac users.

-Gregor

Answer 79

Launchpad Bugs

I'm gobsmacked no-one has mentioned it yet! I personally am an all-round Launchpad fan, and the bug/feature tracking system is certainly a great part of it.

Answer 80

Elementool

A hosted issue tracking tool that also integrates with Elementool Test Cases. It's easy to customize fields, workflow, etc. and you can have unlimited users on an account. Low priced subscription options, with a free 30 day trial to start.

Answer 81

Sadly we use Clarity which is very bad project management software for both projects and bugs. We used to use a homegrown application but senior management decided it didn't have enough bells and whistles, so they bought Clarity. Now it takes 3-4 times as long to do anything as far as managing tasks (or even filling in timesheets) and the messaging in it is so bad, that most of us handle any discussions through emails rather than keeping them in the project where they are hard to follow. Most of the windows won't filter by client, so I have to search through 8 or 9 pages of information to find the tasks I want to put on my timesheet.

I don't know who designed this software but they should be forced to used it 8 hours a day for a year.

Answer 82

Fossil has a nice bug tracker built in see http://www.fossil-scm.org/

http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/bugtheory.wiki

Answer 83

Artifacts is very simple and clear. There is nothing needless. Works without server. Our team really likes it!

Answer 84

Clarify (www.amdocs.com)

It's old and everyone here at work despises it. I don't think it was originally meant for bug tracking software, but for customer support cases. It's awful, hideous, and really really slow: I'd like some condolences please folks.... :)

Answer 85

Most widely used task or project tracking software is Microsoft project pro. This Enterprise Project Management Software is best in industry. Earlier I was using project 2007 but now upgraded to 2010 version.

Answer 86

We use VisionProject and are really satisfied with it. Drag and drop and easy UI is making this tool really easy to use for the Issue Tracking.

Answer 87

BugUp http://www.bugup.com

BugUp Key Benefits:

1. Since the application is web-based, data and status regarding the product is accessible in real time.
2. Create an unlimited amount of projects, products components and bugs.
3. Email notification of updates.
4. User defined system flows and a powerful rule engine.
5. Dashboard customization per user enables a real-time and updated view of data.
6. Manage and track resources progress and status of local and offshore work load.
7. Fully customizable and flexible system.
8. Powerful filter and search capabilities.

Powerful, flexible ,fuly configurable ,easy to install and update ,stable, robust, long lived ,low cost

Answer 88

Assembla's web based Bug Tracking system:

Allows you to track every stage and progress of an issue or bug Report on time invested, and estimated time remaining Attach files, or attach screenshots with the screen capture applet to annotate bug reports There's an activity stream where actions on the issue / ticket are posted

http://www.assembla.com/features/bug-tracking