Re: What issue tracker to use?

[Martijn Pieters <mj@xxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Jul 15, 2002 at 01:30:35PM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> > Are there any plans for another issue tracker for development elsewhere? If
> > not I can prolly set up a Zope CMF Collector (as seen on collector.zope.org,
> > for example). SourceForge is another option, although I see John does all
> > his project hosting on his own servers. :)
> 
> You are quite right on many counts.  I did not expect this project to
> achieve the interest it has.  I wrote OfflineIMAP originally because I have
> been really ticked off at mail readers for years, and didn't want to write a
> new one from scratch, but still wanted to fix the problem.  Apparently many
> others have also been ticked off right alongside me :-)
> 
> So please excuse my slow start on these things.

Not at all, no excuse required! This is how many an Open Source project
starts; one developers itch is scratched and many other find that they and
an itch they didn't know about before.. at least conciously..

This product neatly solves the IMAP-is-too-slow problem for me, where I
don't loose the advantages of IMAP *and* I don't have to use fetchmail,
which only moves the problem from one machine to another..

> I do not host anything on SourceForge because I believe it is already a way
> too big "single point of failure" for the Free Software community and
> therefore I refuse to help it :-)  Not to mention that it provides less
> flexibility with some things, and has some terms & conditions that can be
> onerous at times.  I want the software I write to be now and forever Free,
> dammit, so I'm not going to put it anywhere that could in any way weaken the
> rights granted to people under the GPL.  (Read this paragraph with some
> patriotic revolutionary music in the background <grin>)

Nothing but agreement here from me. Now you are the single point of failure
for all your own projects.. ;)

Aparently the PythonLabs folks find SF to suck less than alternatives. Not
much experience myself, other than that.

> Along with my "all mail readers suck" opinion, I also believe that "all
> bug-tracking systems suck", and that life without a BTS at all simply sucks
> more.  
> 
> My general requirements for a BTS are:
> 1. Bugs be manipulatable via e-mail;
> 2. Bugs should be able to be assigned to specific people;
> 3. Plain-text, free-form reports should be receivable via e-mail;
> 4. a web-based front-end;
> 5. security is important.
> 
> Unfortunately, there is no BTS that meets all my criteria.  I have used
> GNATS before, which works, but fails on #5.  Jitterbug is another
> possibility, which fails #1.  I have not followed it recently, but it may be
> better than it was.  I could also set up a localized version of the Debian
> BTS.  (Incidentally, the Debian BTS also fails on #5; any member of the
> public can manipulate any bug report.  In fact, we have had trouble with bug
> reports getting closed by spam recently.)
> 
> > Advantage of using a CMF setup is that I can also add a CMF Wiki, which
> > would allow us to collaborate on design docs such as might be needed if we'd
> > collectively were to develop a new IMAP library..
> 
> I do run Zope on www.complete.org; if there's e-mail manipulation support
> with that product, I would be happy to install & set it up.

Unfortunately, the CMF Collector won't fit item number #1, there is no email
manipulation support. Items 2-5 are covered. I believe that the reason #1
isn't covered is the fact it is very hard to not loose item #5 on your list
in the process. The only path I se around that is to build in GPG support,
and you'll have to sign all bug manipulation email.

-- 
Martijn Pieters
| Software Engineer  mailto:mj@xxxxxxxx
| Zope Corporation   http://www.zope.com/
| Creators of Zope   http://www.zope.org/
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