I think it would be good to have a blog where fellow developers could post and would allow the team to track the progress of a project. This idea is not original and has been covered by others, but I thought I would cover some of the tools to make it happen. A couple of tools: CVSTrac, Jira/Confluence, SnipSnap, XPlanner and last but not least... Groove. What about email? I am not a fan of using email as a communication medium for development because messages are not always threaded together appropriately and linking between messages is not easy. Linking between messages in a blog or wiki is very easy and allows the conversation to ebb and flow while maintaining references back to original ideas.
Notice also that the blogs/wikis (or blikis) that I mentioned above are also connected to some sort of project tracking device as well. (all except SnipSnap) CVSTrac's integration with CVS is better than all of the others. Jira/Confluence is a great project management tool that will become an industry leader. SnipSnap is just a cool blog/wiki tool that is Java based and easy to set up. As a matter of fact, I have it running as a service on my personal computer to keep track of things going on in my life. It is an uber notepad. XPlanner is an XP specific project management tool that has a wiki built in. And Groove is what Lotus Notes should have been.
If I had to pick one, it would be Jira/Confluence. Even though Confluence is still young, I think that combo is the way of the future. Jira is by far the best bug tracking tool available today. The painful part about picking Jira over CVSTrac is the loss of CVS integration. CVSTrac hooks your checkins to your bugs and vice versa. It also keeps very good records of your checkins. Having the ability to create your own reports has its perks as well. But CVSTrac just needs improvement in so many areas that it can not be used exclusively. FogBugz would be interesting if it wasn't Windows only, but alas, I refuse to run Windows as a server so FogBugz doesn't even get to compete.
One could also make an interesting defense of using multiple selections from above. CVSTrac to manage your cvs users, browse checkins, and browse the files themselves. Jira/Confluence for bug tracking and project blogging/wiki'ing. SnipSnap would be used for personal blogging/wiki'ing. And Groove for those times when you need to "share".
Just a thought...
Carl,
Thanks for your kind words - I agree with most of what you said (except about FogBugz - tell me what it does better than JIRA?) and thought I'd let you know that your wishes are being answered.
JIRA 2.5 has CVS integration (has had since 2.1 or 2.0 IIRC), but it has always been based on receiving emails from CVS to be notified. In the upcoming new release JIRA 2.6, this has all changed.
JIRA now talks directly to your CVS server and retrieves all commit messages etc, so you get full CVS history along side all issues. It also integrates with a variety of CVS viewers, so your file->issue->CVS->commit loop is closed by viewing the actual source files directly from the issues.
I'd love to hear your thoughts after 2.6 is released, if there's anything we can do to improve - please do let me know.
Cheers and thanks again,
Mike
FogBugz has a nifty integration of email... and that is about it. I am very excited to hear about the upgrades forth coming. And with them, the only nice thing that JIRA would be missing that CVSTrac has is the ability to manage CVS users.
Confluence is really becoming a beautiful product, especially if you get the blogging feature built in, and is a terrific addition to the Atlassian family. The integration of JIRA and Confluence are spectacular and I just love the JIRA Issues macro:
http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/TEST/JIRA%2Bissues%2Bmacro%2Btest
I must admit, I am really pressing my client to purchase both JIRA and Confluence. I can only hope they listen to me :)
Posted by: Carl Fyffe at January 25, 2004 09:14 PM
I don't know how long this has been true, but FogBugz is no longer Windows-only.
http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBUGZ/SystemRequirements.html
Posted by: David Moles at March 4, 2004 08:11 PM
Yup, FogBugz now supports Unix. I posted about the new php version about 4 days after I wrote this. It was very exciting news: http://www.sixty4bit.com/mt/archives/2003/12/24/fogbugz_for_unix.html
But I have a soft spot in my heart for Java, so we went with JIRA :)
Posted by: Carl Fyffe at March 4, 2004 10:18 PM
Just wanted to share this interesting related tool: WebNote (http://www.aypwip.org/webnote). It's a web app that acts like a big wall for sticking Post-Its on. Pretty amazing for a web app.
Posted by: Jonathan Aquino at June 29, 2004 01:48 AM
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