Recommended Issue / Bug trackers?
Author
I was wondering which issue / bug trackers people use in their day-to-day professional jobs as game developers?
I'm currently evaluating a few different products for my own company and so far I'm most pleased by what I'm seeing in FogBugz. I've also tried a few other pretty solid products like Trac, GForge and Bugzilla.
I'd love to hear what you guys are using and can recommend :)
Trac is horrific IMHO.
It could just be our setup at work, but it hangs all the time, and doesn't let you sort bugs in particularly logical ways.
But it IS better than nothing, and is decent at alerting you of new bugs.
It could just be our setup at work, but it hangs all the time, and doesn't let you sort bugs in particularly logical ways.
But it IS better than nothing, and is decent at alerting you of new bugs.
I'm a fan of Atlassian's JIRA. I personally wasn't particularly impressed at all with FogBugz; it just doesn't have the robustness or flexibility to handle full-scale real world projects, IMHO.
Of course, I may also be spoiled, since at one point I wrote a completely custom system for myself that worked exactly how I wanted it [wink]
Of course, I may also be spoiled, since at one point I wrote a completely custom system for myself that worked exactly how I wanted it [wink]
I've only used Trac and Bugzilla: between those two I would say Trac > Bugzilla. Bugzilla gets the job done, but it's pretty ugly. Trac has a good visual presentation. And I like that Trac has all those other project-management things built in, like the wiki. I haven't experienced any performance-related problems with Trac as mentioned above, but the project that we used it for was relatively small (~3 developers).
Author
Thanks for the feedback guys!
The reason I'm leaning toward FogBugz so far, is that we want to use the tracker essentially for the whole team, while developing our titles. And that means that anyone from a coder, to an artist, a sound engineer and a project manager, will use this system. The problem is, we've previously tried to use other trackers (Trac, Bugzilla, GForge among others), but have failed at the end because either a) they were too cumbersome to fill in bug reports or features for non-coders, b) the tracker had some serious usability issue/flaw or c) it just plainly did not appeal to the non-coding departments. In almost all cases it was a mix of all three.
One of our initial requirements for the tracker were that it had to support dependencies or some form of gantt charting, for better project management. And looking at FogBugz, it currently does not support anything like that (Instead it has the new "Evidence-Based Scheduling" which seems like a very interesting concept, given that people faithfully submit correct estimates). What's your opinion on this? do you use dependencies alot in your company?
Btw, our team size is around 15.
As always, any feedback is much appreciated.
The reason I'm leaning toward FogBugz so far, is that we want to use the tracker essentially for the whole team, while developing our titles. And that means that anyone from a coder, to an artist, a sound engineer and a project manager, will use this system. The problem is, we've previously tried to use other trackers (Trac, Bugzilla, GForge among others), but have failed at the end because either a) they were too cumbersome to fill in bug reports or features for non-coders, b) the tracker had some serious usability issue/flaw or c) it just plainly did not appeal to the non-coding departments. In almost all cases it was a mix of all three.
One of our initial requirements for the tracker were that it had to support dependencies or some form of gantt charting, for better project management. And looking at FogBugz, it currently does not support anything like that (Instead it has the new "Evidence-Based Scheduling" which seems like a very interesting concept, given that people faithfully submit correct estimates). What's your opinion on this? do you use dependencies alot in your company?
Btw, our team size is around 15.
As always, any feedback is much appreciated.
It doesn't have all the features of the others but I have really *enjoyed* using Mantis. It presents the right information in the right way. Hard to put my finger on but Bugzilla / Trac did not hit that sweet spot for us.
http://www.mantisbt.org/
Its php and even me (not a php programmer) was able to extend and tune some things in minutes to our tastes.
It supports dependencies (relationships between issues. You need to install an extra package for interactive graphs of dependencies.
edit: clickable link
http://www.mantisbt.org/
Its php and even me (not a php programmer) was able to extend and tune some things in minutes to our tastes.
It supports dependencies (relationships between issues. You need to install an extra package for interactive graphs of dependencies.
edit: clickable link
Chalk up another vote for JIRA here. It's impressed me to the extent that we're now using it for tracking issues on GDNet.
It's possible on JIRA to define which fields are presented on each screen... so you could remove some of the non-coder-friendly fields from the Create Issue screen, and have the coders fill them in later on a different screen.
It also has a web services API that can be used for reporting issues, so you could quite easily integrate bug reporting directly into your game - have a button or console command that prompts the user for a summary and description, then submits a bug attaching a screenshot, pertinent camera data, saved game, etc etc... all automatically.
It's possible on JIRA to define which fields are presented on each screen... so you could remove some of the non-coder-friendly fields from the Create Issue screen, and have the coders fill them in later on a different screen.
It also has a web services API that can be used for reporting issues, so you could quite easily integrate bug reporting directly into your game - have a button or console command that prompts the user for a summary and description, then submits a bug attaching a screenshot, pertinent camera data, saved game, etc etc... all automatically.
Bugzero™ is a web-based bug tracking, defect tracking, issue tracking, and change management system used in a distributed team environment to track software bugs, hardware defects, test cases, or any other issues.
This topic is closed to new replies.
Advertisement
Popular Topics
Advertisement
