[ros-general] Bug-tracking systems

[Casper H. <ch...@us...>]

It's time to look into bug-tracking systems for the ReactOS project. I
have set up two bug-tracking systems for testing. There is the popular
Bugzilla at:

http://reactos.wox.org/bugzilla/

and the newer Scarab at:

http://reactos.wox.org:8080/scarab/servlet/scarab/

Feel free to signup and try them out by entering test data in both
systems. All data will be deleted eventually.

Bugzilla is the most mature of the two. Scarab is 1.0 beta 6 and I have
noticed a few bugs in it. Bugzilla is perl based and Scarab is based on
Java servlet technology.

Having looked around the two systems, my vote goes to Scarab for the
following reasons:

* The Scarab UI is more intuitive and have a task based (kind of like
your usual Windows wizards) layout. Scarab guides you through your
tasks, whereas Bugzilla usually present all information in one big form
for you to fill out.

* Scarab has better online help. Help is always just one click away and
it opens in a new window whereas Bugzilla on some pages has a link to a
large page with information (i.e. you have to leave the page to get
help).

* In Scarab, you get all errors at once if you forget to fill out
required fields.

* Scarab is more generel in it's choice of names and more flexible. In
Bugzilla you create bug reports, in Scarab you create issues. In Scarab
you can define an issue called bug report and define your own attributes
for this issue (like description, sverity and status). You can even
define their input type (basicly how they are displayed) to string,
integer, drop-down list, etc. And best of all, they are searchable too!

In Bugzilla you have to do with the predefined attributes like platform,
summary and description.

* And finally, the Scarab UI look is kick ass nice ;o)

A feature that Bugzilla has that might be nice is graphing. Bugzilla has
a plugin module that will graph your bug reports with dependencies
between them. (Sorry, I could not install this module due to errors).
Scarab seems to not have such functionality.

Okay I've finished my speech, now let me hear yours.

Btw. Please continue this discussion on the ros-general mailing list.

Casper Hornstrup