Hey everyone,
My cofounder and I have been using a google doc + lots of dropbox documents to keep track of to-dos, feature roadmap, and bugs, but it's gotten to the point where we do need a real bug tracking system since our google doc spreadsheets are just a mess to sort through.<p>What's a good, lightweight bug tracking system for a small team (< 5 people)? I've used Bugzilla in the past, but that seems to be overkill and it's definitely not lightweight. Trac seems to be decent although I haven't really used it for projects. Anyone have good experiences with Mantis?<p>Thanks
Overview of Small teams bug tracking software:<p>Unfuddle - Hosted solution, SVN/Git hosting + really clean bug tracking. Free for 2 people, $9/mo for small teams. Has Mylyn support and a OS X dashboard widget<p>Bugzilla - everyone seems to agree it's too heavy and I don't want to deal with installing and configuring it<p>Trac - Pretty lightweight, good integration with SVN, and useful built-in wiki, quick, simple installation<p>Speckle - To-do list with multiple checkboxes, made by HN's very own elliotkember<p>Pivotal Tracker - hosted solution with drag n drop interface, allows you to import a list of existing bugs in CSV format. I found the interface a little clunky for my taste.<p>Others mentioned that I haven't checked out:
Fogzbugz, Redmine, Lighthouse, Flyspray, Purifyapp, Codebase
+1 for redmine<p>We (~7 people) migrated away from trac and use redmine for several projects with subversion and now git. Working very well since 3 years.<p>A friend of mine uses indefero and was happy with it. Link: <a href="http://www.indefero.net/open-source/" rel="nofollow">http://www.indefero.net/open-source/</a>
I recently started using redmine (<a href="http://www.redmine.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.redmine.org</a>) and only had good experiences with it. It's an open-source ruby on rails project management "framework". It supports everything you are looking for, and then some more, namely:<p>- roadmap for upcoming versions/features
- dedicated site for documentation
- wiki
- forum
- tickets
- repository support<p>The repository support let's you do things like refer to a ticket in a commit message which then gets associated with said ticket (or even changes the status of the ticket as soon as you commit the bugfix).<p>I could go on and on... but you get the point.<p>Here's a demo where you can give some of the things a try:<p><a href="http://demo.redmine.org/" rel="nofollow">http://demo.redmine.org/</a>
I've been building Speckle (<a href="http://speckleapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://speckleapp.com</a>) for a little while: a to-do list with multiple checkboxes per item. it's reasonably light-weight -
I don't know whether it suits what you're looking for, but Id be interested to know what you think :)<p>Edit: epi0Bauqu beat me to it!
We use Redmine here (~4 people) and it's great. Rails backed, lots of plugin if you need more and easily extendable.<p>It integrate cleanly with CVS, Git, Mercurial, SVN, ... and we'll even do invoicing with it in a few weeks.<p>There are paid hosting options if you don't want to maintain it yourself.
Try Pivotal Tracker. It's more geared for todos / feature stuff (and does it really well), but you can use it for bugs, too. If you're tracking more than 50 or so bugs, I could see wanting to use something else, though.
Trac is great and plugs in really easily to SVN. It's at least worth playing around with since so many open source projects use it.<p>I wrote a Django middleware that uses Trac's xmlrpc plugin to automatically create Trac tickets for errors. I'm sure it's just as simple to do for whatever you're using.
How lightweight are you talking? Are you looking for a hosted tool (like fogbugz) or are you definitely going to manage/host it yourself?<p>I've been using Jira, and there's a $10 version for small groups.<p>Whatever you chose, make sure of one thing: every tracked bug or task has a unique URL.
I'm currently working on a bug tracker (<a href="http://purifyapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://purifyapp.com</a>). I can send you a beta invite if you're interested? Also open to anyone else who fancies trying it out.<p>Email me at jim@purifyapp.com
I just started using <a href="http://speckleapp.com/" rel="nofollow">http://speckleapp.com/</a><p>It's relatively new, very lightweight, and made by HN member elliottkember, who is very open to feedback/suggestions.
Our three man team recently took advantage of the FogBugz YC offer and gave it a try. There were some things we liked about it, but in the end it felt too heavy for us. It was more of a support ticketing system than an easy way for a small team to track their bugs (although it would probably be good if you had a lot of external users reporting bugs).<p>The other problem was that even a lot of custom tweaking, we never quite got the email subsystem working the way we wanted. We finally started using a plugin to make sure we all got emailed on every change, but then we got swamped because we couldn't figure out how to make it send only one email if you changed multiple fields on a ticket. It always wanted to send one for each piece of data that changed.<p>Before that, we'd been using a Google Docs spreadsheet, doing pseudo-joel-spreadsheet for project tracking and keeping a simple list of bugs.<p>Now we're using Wave and treating it as a digital whiteboard. It's got its share of bugs still, but I've been really happy.<p>We've got one wave where we do project tracking (including moving little name markers around, so we can all see real time what everyone is working on. And we've got another wave for bugs with same rules.<p>We don't put nearly as much info in our wave as we used to put in the spreadsheet (we did a lot of effort estimation and completion time tracking), but the simplicity may actually be helping us keep on top of it better.<p>And it's awesome to collaboratively rework our goals for each release and at any time we can just scroll through our bug list.
<a href="http://www.codebasehq.com/features/tickets-milestones" rel="nofollow">http://www.codebasehq.com/features/tickets-milestones</a><p>Codebase has a nice feature - you can modify tickets from your commit messages.
I'm currently working on a web app builder called AppRabbit (<a href="http://apprabbit.com" rel="nofollow">http://apprabbit.com</a>) and used it to create my bug/issue tracking system for tracking my progress with...it. I'm still working on finishing up a few fairly fundamental features, but you're welcome to try it out if you'd like a beta invite. Shoot me an email if you (or anyone else) is interested in seeing what it can do. admin@apprabbit.com.
There's a difference between a bug tacker and an issue tracker.<p>Bugzilla works great as a bug tracker but is not a great issue tracker. Trac, the opposite.<p>From what you described, seems you're looking more for an issue tracker or a project planning sort of thing.<p>I've liked Redmine, though I haven't used it professionally yet.
I'm also a Mantis user, and I'm quite happy with it.<p>Mantis supports Git and SVN integration, if you use the Source plugin. You can find detailed information on how to add these functionalities to Mantis at the following URL: <a href="http://leetcode.net/blog/2009/01/integrating-git-svn-with-mantisbt/" rel="nofollow">http://leetcode.net/blog/2009/01/integrating-git-svn-with-ma...</a><p>Note: Importing repositories with a couple hundred commits will take a while!<p>I also like FlySpray, but unfortunately, the last commit seems to be 1 year old.
Based on posts here I found the "Task-focused API" <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task-Focused_Interface" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task-Focused_Interface</a> . There are lots of extensions available based on it: <a href="http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Mylyn_Extensions" rel="nofollow">http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Mylyn_Extensions</a> . For example, from gmail, you can add a task by tagging a message! This Extensions page also seems to be a good reference list of todo aka project management trackers.
For bugs <a href="http://curecode.org/" rel="nofollow">http://curecode.org/</a> is ery lightweight and fast. You can see it in use here <a href="http://curecode.org/rebol3/view-tickets.rsp" rel="nofollow">http://curecode.org/rebol3/view-tickets.rsp</a> .<p>For sharable todo's I can "recommend" (my) <a href="http://www.qwikitodo.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.qwikitodo.com</a> , you can even make "actionable" Plan/Todo meshes with it that have titles, subtitles, free form mixing of text todo items, regular lists, etc...
<a href="http://www.getdonedone.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.getdonedone.com</a><p>It's great for small teams where you don't need a ton of reporting features - and it's focused on real-time responsiblity (who needs to respond to what right now). Google docs/excel aren't efficient because there's too much extra noise (sifting thru bugs that don't pertain to you, not easily seeing what bugs are waiting on you with a question, etc.)<p>Hope you'll try us out!<p>-KC
I haven't used it, but this is "interesting" - <a href="http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/index.wiki" rel="nofollow">http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/index.wiki</a><p>(I use Trac myself, and it's OK, but not wonderful - haven't found anything better, but will be trying Redmine after reading comments here).<p>[edit: also, you can do bug tracking with Google code, which I am surprised no-one else has mentioned]
Flyspray is as advertised: "uncomplicated." If you want a simple system, it is worth a try.
<a href="http://flyspray.org/" rel="nofollow">http://flyspray.org/</a>
Why not build one..<p>* Within a few minutes,<p>* Online,<p>* Over Google App Engine and<p>* Without Python/Java coding.<p>Check out :
<a href="http://ifreetools.blogspot.com/2010/03/building-simple-bug-tracker-application.html" rel="nofollow">http://ifreetools.blogspot.com/2010/03/building-simple-bug-t...</a>
More of a project management tool, but I used thymer (thymer.stunf.com/) while putting together a social network for dogs for a client. They would just mark the bugs, I'd comment on it, and we'd have a point of reference for when we talked together.
You might check out Garret Dimon's <a href="http://sifterapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://sifterapp.com</a>. I think it's what 37signals would make if they made bug-tracking software.
Unfuddle is very good, very light and easy, it specially helpfull if you are using Eclipse IDE, unfuddle has Mylyn connector to synchronize bugs with ide.