On Feb 22, 2012, at 12:36 PM, Cynthia Ng wrote:

> Hi All,
> 
> We're looking at implementing an issue tracker for internal use, so
> I'm looking for recommendations.
> 
> What's key:
> 1) minimal effort in install/setup i.e. ready to use out of the box
> 2) small scale is okay, we have a very small team
> 3) ideally, have an area for documentation and issue creation via email
> 
> What does your institution use?
> What do you like and dislike most about it?
> Would you recommend it to others?
> 
> Responses (short or detailed) would be greatly appreciated.

I've only managed Bugzilla and Trac.

They both were a little annoying to set up (define all of your
software components and versions, and who's responsible for each
one, so they'll get notified if bugs are filed).

Trac has good reporting & wiki for documentation, and their
markup syntax makes it easy to link trouble tickets within the
documentation (and it'll scratch them out as they're marked as
resolved).

I did get into some problems, as we had it open to the public,
and someone posted an attachment*, which triggered a 'security
incident' (which didn't seem to reach the 'men with guns show
up and seize your machines' like it had in the past ... instead,
it was 'we're going to make you rebuild your machine over and over
against until we say it's okay' so I wasted 2 weeks on it)

It's also a bit of a pain to strip all occurrences of the term
'wiki' and 'trac' from the software, so that I didn't show up as
7 of the top 10 results in google for 'site:nasa.gov wiki'.  If
you're keeping it private, it might not be so bad.

I also have no idea how useful the interaction with change control
is ... we were using CVS, and it was still subversion specific
back then.


I've also helped to configure Remedy before, it was more
than a decade ago, but it left a bad taste it my mouth (and it
wasn't cheap)

...

As others have mentioned github, I know there's other services
out there ... one project here uses launchpad.net (which is
tied to Bazaar), and they seem happy with it, but I've never
administered it myself.

-Joe

* The attachment was an image which said 'I've hacked your machine'.
Years later, when we switched virus scanning software, it found a
backup that had that file in it, and it turns out there was a
JPEG exploit in it ... but the security gestapo had thought that
*my* server had been hacked, which is what triggered it all.