From: Rob Sanheim <rsanheim@...>
Date: 2006-12-23T03:26:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby's Trac Alternative

On 12/22/06, Martin DeMello <martindemello@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/22/06, Bil Kleb <Bil.Kleb@nasa.gov> wrote:
> > Trans wrote:
> > >
> > > I think there is a tendency to overestimate tools like Trac.
> >
> > Indeed, as the http://agilemanifesto.org says,
> >
> >   Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
> >
> > but for a team of 12 under a posse of project managers,
> > Trac is a necessary evil.  And when you approach tens
> > of teams and whole organizations worth of project managers,
> > Trac looks gossamer thin.
>
> Personally, our startup (10 people at the moment) has been a lot
> happier since we moved from Trac to Bugzilla + Mediawiki. I can't
> remember the specifics, but Trac simply lacked some features our QA
> lead was used to from Bugzilla, and it was too much of a pain to try
> and see if we could find a third party plugin that implemented them.
>
> On the other hand, Trac was very quick and easy to set up, and got us
> off the ground with minimum effort. I wouldn't have wanted to start
> off using Bugzilla.
>
> martin

We are using Trac right now (4 developers, ~10 biz people), and its
working well so far.  The only thing I miss is having a way to attach
estimates to tasks, whether it be "points" in the xp sense or just
hours.  I know it can be done with custom fields in Trac, but just
haven't looked into the details.  The SVN integration is very nice.

Bugzilla may be powerful, buts its UI is just so horrid that I dread
using it.  It definitely feels like the interface was developed by
programmers who just wanted to throw every field and option onto the
screen, with no regard to usability.  For the vast majority of items,
you just don't need to mess with 20 fields to enter a to-do item - so
why not hide them behind an "advanced" link?

- Rob