LWN: Comments on "DisTract - the Distributed Bug Tracker"

DisTract - the Distributed Bug Tracker

wadcom — Mon, 21 May 2007 21:50:31 +0000

For the record:

http://www.ditrack.org

DITrack -- distributed issue tracking system written in Python and using Subversion as a backend. Runs on Unix and MacOS X.

Another distributed bug tracker

kevinbsmith — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:31:43 +0000

Here is another (seemingly quite different) take on this idea:
http://www.panoramicfeedback.com/opensource/

From that page:

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Bugs Everywhere is a bug-tracking system to complement distributed revision control. We designed it for our own use internally, and now we're offering it to the world.

By storing bug data beside source code, it maps bug report flow to code flow. When you fix a bug, you can close the bug report. And when the bug-fix is merged into another branch, the bug will be closed there, too.
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I am a huge advocate of distributed RCS, but have to confess that I haven't yet wrapped my brain around distributed bug tracking.

Similar approach using ikiwiki

pimlott — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 22:47:25 +0000

Bah, that was an accidental post. I had meant not to post at all, because 1) what I had to say is complicated and would take a while to write and 2) I'm not as sure about it as I was when I thought about it before. :-)

Similar approach using ikiwiki

pimlott — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 22:45:24 +0000

I've given considerable thought to this model (versioning bugs along with the code) and rejected it. At least, I don't think it works well when

Bug reports are really "outside of time" with respect to code revisions: When looking at a version of the code repository (eg, the latest release), you really want to see all future information about bugs in that version.

On the other hand, it has the merit of simple implementation, so if people want to try it out and see how it works in practice, go for it!

Similar approach using ikiwiki

dmarti — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 20:31:59 +0000

You can also keep track of bugs within your project RCS using Ikiwiki issue tracking. This approach looks especially good when you can set things up so that one commit can do three things: fixes the code, edits the documentation, and changes the status of a bug. Revert the code change and the docs and BTS change too.