[Freeciv-Dev] (PR#16811) Issue tracking system for Freeciv

["Kevin Benton" <s1kevin@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=16811 >

> > RT as configured is a royal pain to use.  One of the reasons for the
> > difficulty is the basic design of RT.  As a Bugzilla developer, I
> think
> 
> Why is RT, as configured, a royal pain to use?
> What is the problem with the basic design of RT?

From what I've seen of the Freeciv implementation of RT, there are a few
issues that strike me right away:  There's no basic search versus
advanced search capability and the searches that I see are rather
limited in capability.  Also, as-configured, I don't see a way for users
to sign themselves up for RT access.  RT also lets users see buttons
they're restricted from clicking on such as changing an issue's status.
 Bugzilla doesn't allow that.  I could go on, but I think you'll find
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ to be an excellent example of how Bugzilla
is being used today.

> > this group would benefit greatly by switching from RT to Bugzilla.
> It
> 
> We used to use Jitterbug years ago. Then we wanted to switch to
> something which did more.
> 
> At the time, we evaluated Bugzilla, RT, Mantis and some others. At the
> time, Bugzilla and RT seemed the best candidates, RT being easier to
> use (e.g. searching a bug in Bugzilla presented you with a bewildering
> interface laden with widgets). Mantis was nice but seemed to be less
> battle tested.

When was that?  Bugzilla has grown a lot since I started working on it.

> At the time, a newbie got lost in the Bugzilla interface quick (at
> least I did). Then there is that Zarro boogs found thing. I guess it
> sounds really funny. For a native english speaker. Unfortunately not
> all of us are native english speakers and such puns often get lost in
> translation.

Heh - the "Zarro boogs" thing is a very easy fix - it's a configuration
option and I agree with you.

> So we upgraded from Jitterbug to RT and there was much rejoicement. Of
> course RT looked better than Bugzilla before our RT bug database got a
> bazillion tickets and things like searching, or worse, adding a user
> to a group got s-l-o-w.

Believe me - I understand.  Bugzilla is doing its job very nicely for us
where I work and I'm managing a number of installations.  The database
on BMO handles a number of differnt products and has ticket numbers
currently up around 300K.

> Bugzilla does seem to scale *much* better than RT.

One of our groups here uses RT and the concensus from what I've heard is
they'd rather use Bugzilla over RT, but the group using it wasn't
willing to change.

> Actually, even RT would probably be faster if we upgraded it.
> Unfortunately:
> 
> 1) We customized the RT configuration to a point where a simple
> upgrade is hard.

I can imagine.  In Bugzilla 3.0, custom fields are scheduled to arrive.
 That'll allow Bugzilla Administrators to add their own customized
fields to the screens as they desire.

> 2) The box hosting the RT bugtracker uses an old Linux distro and
> upgrading that box is not very easy given our physical access to the
> box is cumbersome, to say the least.

What kind of hardware is it?  What back-end is currently in use?

> > make it easier for those of us who use FreeCiv to search bugs before
> > filing one, and more importantly, it would make it easier for those
> of
> > us who want to contribute, to research where things are today.  I
> think
> > it makes a lot of sense since Bugzilla is also an open source
> project
> > designed specifically to support projects like this.  To learn more
> > about Bugzilla, see http://www.bugzilla.org/.
> 
> Let us say we wanted to transition to Bugzilla. We would like to port
> over our existing RT bugs database so we wouldn't lose the history. If
> that is possible, in a way which does not force us do a lot of work
> (hey, I'm lazy), we will consider porting the bugs database to
> Bugzilla.

That is possible and I might even be willing to help in that area. 
Bugzilla does have an XML interface and is able to import issues.  The
question is, how to map fields across.  I would need a copy of your
customized RT schema and descriptions of fields if my help were needed.