Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Bug Mozilla Programming The Internet Technology

Bugzilla on Windows? 111

Posted by Cliff from the a-painful-process dept.
slipandfall asks: "I just started work at a 100% Windows shop (no chance of changing this) and would love to implement Bugzilla for issue tracking but statements like this - 'Making Bugzilla work on Windows is still a painful processes.' in the OS-Specific installation notes don't make it seem reasonable. Since there is no chance of using Linux/UNIX here, can I get people's experiences using Bugzilla on Windows or experience with a tool (open source or not) on Windows with similar notification, discussion and issue tracking features?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Bugzilla on Windows? More

Bugzilla on Windows?

Comments Filter:
  • VMWar^WXen

  • Mantis! (Score:5, Informative)

    by DamienMcKenna ( 181101 ) <{moc.annek-cm} {ta} {neimad}> on Friday December 03, 2004 @10:34AM (#10985672)
    I've used Mantis [mantisbt.org] with great success for several years, both on Linux and Windows hosts. They also have limited support for SQL Server, which is somewhat unofficial with the current v0.19 release but official release will come with v1 next year. Enjoy!

    Damien

    • Re:Mantis! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by vrt3 ( 62368 )
      We use Mantis too, using Apacha and MySQL running on Windows. No problem. I don't know how it compares to bugzilla concerning features though.
    • I will second this: if you are looking for a bugtracker that works well and is a breeze to install, Mantis is it. I personally use it on LAMP platforms, but I have installed it on Windows on an experimental basis and it worked fine.

  • RT on Windows (Score:5, Informative)

    by autrijus ( 48596 ) * on Friday December 03, 2004 @10:35AM (#10985684) Homepage

    RT [bestpractical.com] is an enterprise-grade ticketing system which enables a group of people to intelligently and efficiently manage tasks, issues, and requests submitted by a community of users. It is used by Fortune 100 companies, government agencies, educational institutions, and development organizations worldwide.

    I have created a Windows port of RT [bestpractical.com], and have been maintaining it for two years now, selling support contracts for a living, as well as developing RT-Foundry [openfoundry.org], a project similar to GForge/Trac, on top of RT.

    The RT-Win32 installer comes with its own Apache2, MySQL4.1, Perl 5.8.6 and Fetchmail, so you'd not need any other existing SQL server to set it up. I'd be happy if you'd give it a try. :)

    • RT is a general issue tracking system, not a bugtracking system. I have used RT for a while now and I will recommend RT for nearly any support deployment I will not recommend it for bug tracking. The main reasons are:

      1. It does not have any source code control integration. It relates well to issues/problems reported by users, but it does not relate well to a source tree.

      2. It is extremely versatile and open-ended. You can adapt it to nearly any task, but there is a very high likelihood that you will hang
      • Well, yes, that's what RT::Integrate::SVN, RTx::Foundry and other related RT extensions on CPAN is for. We are also working on a better, more simplified UI for project development (ala Jira, Trac.) :-)
    • your Wiki is world-writable. And some 'AnonymousGnome' on revision 56 of the Windows Install page replaced it with adverts to poker and spam sites.

      I've replaced it with the previous revision, but I noticed a few other 'Anonymous' revisions had been made.

  • Something else perhaps (Score:3, Informative)

    by jsfetzik ( 40515 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @10:37AM (#10985702)
    I am in a similar situation, mostly Windows with a couple of HP-UX machines that I don't have real access to. I ended up installing Mantis Bug Tracker, http://www.mantisbt.org/ [mantisbt.org]. It's written in PHP and install time and complexity is low.

  • Issue Tracking (Score:4, Insightful)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @10:37AM (#10985708)
    To begin with Bugzilla is a very crude bugtracking system that is really only suited for open source projects. It reeks for more generalized issue tracking applications. If you set it up it isn't going to impress management on how cool OSS is. I would suggest looking online for other alternatives. I know that the guys at Tigris.org maintain a list of OSS alternatives, and have their own system wich I think is much nicer than Bugzilla.

    • I absolutely agree. Bugzilla is one of the worst bug tracking systems I have ever used. The only reason Bugzilla is popular is because a handful of large projects use it, so that it was a lot of name recognition.

      • Re:Issue Tracking (Score:3, Insightful)

        by wskellenger ( 675359 )
        Why in the hell would a "handful" of large projects use a system that sucks?

        KDE, Mozilla, Gnome -- these developers are all morons, using the worst system available? What in the hell are you guys smoking?

        After you're done answering the above questions, please state a few reasons why you feel Bugzilla is the worst system around. What do the other systems do better? How could Bugzilla be improved?

        Contrary to your opinions, I think Bugzilla is a absolutely fantastic issue tracking system. It has dram

        • What do the other systems do better?

          Integrate with version control and project planning systems.

          • You mean like:

            CVSZilla [cvszilla.org]

            ScumBug [asu.edu] Both provide integration between Bugzilla and CVS. CVSZilla also integrates with Subversion. Jason Pollock

            • No, I mean integration where the change sets and bugs are stored in a common database schema.

              • Just out of curiosity why is it necessary to store them in common? I've worked with lots of different tracking systems that were on a different platform than the code and I don't see the issue with it other than personal preference. In some cases the code wasn't even on the same system as the executables generated from the compile, we had to cross compile from one system to produce for a different one and the bug tracking was performed on a third platform.
                • Just out of curiosity why is it necessary to store them in common?

                  Report generation.

                  • What types of reports? Release Content?

                    Most report code that I write is perfectly capable of generating reports across multiple database connections. :) But then, I'm hand-crafting these things. :)

                    It all depends on where you start from. Sure, you don't get it all in a single query, but you do have all of the information there. I've frequently done things like:

                    1) get all of the bugs I'm interested in out of bugzilla.
                    2) get all of the transactions associated with those bugs out of cvszilla.

                    It's more o

  • Just went through this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GeckoX ( 259575 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @10:40AM (#10985751)
    We just went through this recently at my company.
    Our first though was Bugzilla, of course. But after looking into actually deploying it we realized it wasn't going to be that easy. So before we buried ourselves, we looked around to make sure Bugzilla was actually the right choice for us.

    Turns out it wasn't.

    We found Atlassian's JIRA [atlassian.com]. Installs like a breeze, easy to manage, no headaches, even actively tied into Atlassian's JIRA bugtracking system for itself! (And it works, seen bugs that we have submitted fixed in short order!)

    We're not a really big shop, so I can't speak too much from the large scale deployment end, but aside from that this was a fantastic choice for us and I highly recommend it. (I am in no way affiliated with Atlassian or JIRA)

    • Yup, JIRA is where it's at.

      We have used bugzilla for a few years, and just made the transition to JIRA due to the ability to better track all parts of the development process.

      I would even go so far to say that JIRA has been the best improvement to my development team in the 3 years I have been on it.

  • Cygwin (Score:2, Informative)

    by UberChuckie ( 529086 )
    Have you tried installing Cygwin [cygwin.com] to 'fool' Bugzilla into thinking it's running on Linux?

    • Re:Cygwin (Score:3, Informative)

      by sho222 ( 834270 )
      I'm currently running Bugzilla on Windows using Cygwin to support my project. It works just fine - this is a valid solution.

  • Fogbugz (Score:4, Informative)

    by doofusdan ( 71574 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @10:44AM (#10985802)

    I'm not a hardcore Fogbugz [fogcreek.com] user, but I've been involved with a few projects that had lightweight use of it, and I think it is quite nice. nice. It runs on Unix/Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X [fogcreek.com].

    It is not free as in beer [fogcreek.com]. But it is quite reasonably priced imho. There's a free trial [fogbugz.com] of course.

    Check out their pages on How Fogbugz Works [fogcreek.com] and Why Fogbugz Works [fogcreek.com]

    It's from Joel Splosky, writer of the JoelOnSoftware blog [joelonsoftware.com].

  • We have installed FogBugz a couple of month ago on a Win2K server, it took us the whole of an hour to set up and create the accounts for everyone. It's very simple to use (even more so that Bugzilla IMHO), and has really helped us streamline the QA process ... Maybe you should look into it instead of Bugzilla. And although it isn't free, it's not exactly expensive either. http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/index.html

  • CoLinux (Score:3, Informative)

    by magefile ( 776388 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @10:49AM (#10985868)
    I have a friend that uses Colinux to run Debian on his Windows machine (it's essentially a VirtualPC type thing). You could pop the server onto that and it should work fine.

  • Here's a list (Score:4, Informative)

    by Nagus ( 146351 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @10:54AM (#10985937)
    Edd Dumbill has a list of (mostly) free issue tracking systems [usefulinc.com]. It's a very good starting point.

    One of the most interesting systems in that list is (IMHO) Eventum [mysql.com], by the company that produces the commercial version of MySQL. It only needs PHP and MySQL, and should therefore run well on Windows. Be advised that I haven't actually tried it though.

  • So if your work machine has to run windows, set up something free (Linux, BSD, whatever) to run on VMware on top of Windows. It's a win-win!

    ;P

  • no problem (Score:2, Informative)

    by stefankoegl ( 687410 )
    I've set up bugzilla on windows following this tutorial [bugzilla.org] and it works quite well.

  • user mode linux. (Score:1, Redundant)

    by leuk_he ( 194174 )
    Isn't there some user mode linux port that runs under windows? In those webbased interfaces kind of software this might be a solutions.

    Anyone tried it? Or is user mode linix just a development toy?
  • I just got a job making coffee for the, um, interrogators at Guantanamo bay. They're used to percolated mud. I'd like for them to have better coffee, but they wouldn't go for any sort of espresso drink -- if it's not in the pot when they walk up, it's not coffee. What can I do to get them better coffee?

    The answer is, some people don't deserve good coffee. If you want a job making good coffee, go where people can tell the difference.

    For bug tracking... let the bigots rent some $25,000 bugpile, and su

    • I second this. If management is so bigotted they won't allow any non-Windows machines around, even though it may be a better solution, then too bad.

      These people, being a MS-only shop, are probably used to everything costing an arm and a leg, and anything else is going to look bad to them. Since you're only their employee, your job is NOT to deliver the best solution, but to say what they want to hear. They want to hear about how they need to spend $100k on some huge, bloated system from some proprietary
  • Similar situation here. We (me and my co-conspirator) just set up a Linux server at home, ran Bugzilla on it, started using it from work. Got other people onboard. Started linking it into programs for bug reporting. It became indispensible.

    Then someone asked IT why it was so slow to load pages. We explained the situation to them, and it was decided we'd have to move it in-house. After several failed attempts to get it running on Windows... well, suffice it to say we now have a friendly little Linux box sit
    • Unfortunately it sounds like sneaking Linux under management's radar isn't a viable option in this case. The author has already stated that they are a Windows shop and they can't bring in a non-Windows solution.

      As for your solution, I'm guessing you weren't doing any serious work involving company intellectual property (IP) or company/customer sensitive data. Does your company have IT staff who protect both company internal systems and your home system? Even though you may be a very careful administra

  • Missing something? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Lando ( 9348 ) <lando2+slashNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday December 03, 2004 @11:53AM (#10986727) Homepage Journal
    Just went over and looked at bugzilla.org. On the download page it says.

    Windows users: It is now possible to install Bugzilla on Windows with very little if any modification to Bugzilla itself. See Byron Jones' Bugzilla Installation Guide for Windows [bugzilla.org] for instructions.
    • thanks for pointing that out.

      one of the goals for bugzilla 2.18 was to have almost "out of the box" windows support. this was achieved, with the only workaround being the sendmail stub (bugzilla still has /usr/lib/sendmail hardcoded).

      recently there's been a lot of activity in bringing the documtation up to speed, ready for the 2.20 release.

      -byron jones
  • If you install Linux in a virtual machine such as the free qemu [freeoszoo.org] then Linux becomes a Windows application. :)
  • My company has used Scarab [tigris.org] for over two years now and it's worked great. We use it for bug tracking and for our help desk. It runs just fine for us under Windows. It's given OSS a good name at my company, and since then we've started using more and more OS tools.
  • would love to implement Bugzilla for issue tracking but statements like this - 'Making Bugzilla work on Windows is still a painful processes.' in the OS-Specific installation notes don't make it seem reasonable.

    Why don't you TRY to install and run it on a Windows box, and IF it doesn't work, get back to us. I read yesterday that there are THOUSENDS of people that have been abducted by aliens. Doesn't make it so.

    • Why don't you TRY to install and run it on a Windows box, and IF it doesn't work, get back to us. I read yesterday that there are THOUSENDS of people that have been abducted by aliens. Doesn't make it so

      Because most of the in the *real* world where people have *real* jobs they don't have time to tinker with stuff endlessly just for their own geek satisfaction.

      Assuming that the experience of probably hundreds or thousands of people is norm when trying to install software isn't a bad thing. *Everything* d

      • Because most of the in the *real* world where people have *real* jobs they don't have time to tinker with stuff endlessly just for their own geek satisfaction.

        Really? Testing possible solutions to IT problems is what most IT departments do! Besides, it should not take more than a few hours at most to test the idea.

    • I read yesterday that there are THOUSENDS of people that have been abducted by aliens. Doesn't make it so.

      If a strange Mexican man offers your child some candy, and your child steps into his car, that's considered an alien abduction unless you live in Mexico.

      • If a strange Mexican man offers your child some candy, and your child steps into his car, that's considered an alien abduction unless you live in Mexico.

        I stand corrected.

      • If a strange Mexican man offers your child some candy, and your child steps into his car, that's considered an alien abduction unless you live in Mexico.

        Excuse me but I do believe your white sheet is showing! Maybe if you cut a few air holes in it it won't block the oxygen to your brain. How about this: If a strange Canadian man offers your child some candy, and your child steps into his car, that's considered an alien abduction unless you live in Canada.

        In case you did not mean to sound racist, uninte

        • How about this: If a strange Canadian man offers your child some candy, and your child steps into his car, that's considered an alien abduction unless you live in Canada.

          I'd assume that a lot more Slashdot readers live in Canada than in Mexico, so what you said would just result in someone else trolling for a (Score:+5, Funny+Insightful) with "But I live in Canada, you insensitive clod!"

  • Install coLinux (http://www.colinux.org/ [colinux.org]) on Windows (use the latest development snapshot) with a Debian image for example, configure network and you'll have a true linux box with his own IP address running under Windows !
  • Making Bugzilla work on Windows is still a painful processes.'

    They just took the 'Making $SOFTWARE work on Windows is still a painful process' line from the Installation Notes Template in their preferred word processor, and put in the Bugzilla name and their own personalized spelling errors.

  • I develop on Windows boxes, but I use Cygwin to give me access to all of the Linux libraries and tools to which I've grown accustomed.

  • Altassian JIRA (Score:3, Informative)

    by maybenull ( 704666 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @01:10PM (#10987813)
    excellent product that i highly recommend. source is clean and installtion is easy. cost money but it relatively inexpensive, espicially if you work for a large company like me. customer listing is impressive (not that this means a great deal but certainly only helps): http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/customers.j sp standard $1200 profession $2400 enterprise $4800 (you get the source for each edition and support for a year and i think upgrades for year) for the war/webapp you need java, an application server (tomcat, jboss, ) and a relational database (postgres, mysql, ). or use there prepackaged/standalone version containing an application server (i think tomcat) and relational datbaase (i think hypersonic). took me 15 minutes to setup the standalone version and about an hour to setup the webapp version. i write java webapps for a living, but if youve setup bugzilla before there documentation should be good enough for non java developers. there is a 30 day trial, just download and install. no gimmicks. i belive the current or next version implements a workflow engine (i think osworkflow) if you need it. note that i am in no way affiliated with Atlassian and my remarks are based solely on memory so things could have changed.
    • note that several other relation db are supported than mysql and postrgess and the same goes for application servers. also not that there adminstartion/configuration pages are a brieze and is a big reason i chose this products. authenticating to an ldap server is as simple as xml configuration and with little code authorization and roles/groups can come from ldap as well.
  • Hi,

    why don't you just install a chap ($20) old PC with Linux and run bugzilla on it?

  • FogBugz (Score:2)

    by sig ( 9968 )
    Take a look at Fog Creek Software's [fogcreek.com] FogBugz [fogcreek.com]. Its usage paradigm is a little different than bugzilla, but a lot of people swear by it. It's well supported and designed to work on Windows, so it shouldn't be too much of a headache to get running.

  • From the README =) (Score:3, Funny)

    by julie-h ( 530222 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @03:18PM (#10989862) Homepage
    Compared to the Linux version, the Windows version comes with pre summited bugs like:

    "You have installed Windows." (WONTFIX)

    or

    "My computer crashes all the time." (NOTABUG, BUTMANYBUGS)

    Enjoy! =)


  • Slap a XP-teletubby look on some desktop environment, and presto.
  • The newsgroup over at news.mozilla.org (netscape.public.mozilla.webtools) has lots of postings about Bugzilla under Windoze - check it out and pour through the old posts. If you've got a problem, it's prolly already been asnwered. If you don't see it, go ahead and ask - ppl there are fairly nice.

    --LWM
  • I have worked with all significant Issue and defect tracking solutions and I can say without hesitation, that it is not worth your time to setup, configure and maintain Bugzilla in a windows environment, In fact I would not use it in any corporate setting.

    I recommend TeamTrack by Serena software. Even though the licensing comes at a steep price, it's much simpler to configure, and far more robust in features. Plus they offer licensing that scales to any sized company.
  • no chance of using Linux/UNIX here

    Really? Which routers or switches run on Windows?

    But seriously, If they have any network to speak of, then they already have plenty of network devices that do not run MS-Windows as the O.S. What difference is one more?

    • Marconi ESX-2400, which is no longer sold, or the Marconi NSX-9500, which still is if you ask. The core is a Windows NT system, you can hook a monitor and keyboard and use notepad to edit the config. Not that they support that, but it's there.

      It's primarily sold as a LANE (ATM) services box, it has excellent LES/BUS performance.

  • Mantis! (Score:2, Informative)

    by bonezed ( 187343 )
    use Mantis instead of bugzilla

    it will run on Windows too

    http://mantisbt.org/

  • At my last project I proposed SCARAB (http://www.tigris.org). At first it was a bit clumpsy to configure but finally it worled well (meanwhile a better, newer version is availbale).

    At my company I installed JIRA (http://www.atlassian.com), partly it has far less options (except for the enterprise version) but out of the box it does 95% of what I want to do (which is more than SCARAB does out of the box). Also it is much nicer to navigate than SCARAB, IMHO.

    If you count the hours spend installing the $1200
  • I've set up Bugzilla on my computer at work to demo it to management so the install can be done. It is not that easy because you need to follow directions carefully and install all the pieces required: MySQL, Apache, Pearl and additional modules, also editing several config files. The registry edit required was one minor error I made. It works as designed after you get it all installed and configured - but really, you must ask yourself if it meats your requirements. My management's impression was that the
  • Even for windows a clean msi install package of plone is availiable....
    No need to install apache, perl, mysql. Just donwlowad and run it (http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/collective/Pl o neCollectorNG-1.2.6.tar.gz?download). The issue collector (download it at: can be downloaded and installed in a very simple way (just unpack the zip in the products dir). It is not as perfect as bugzilla but the guys use issue collector for the development of plone and it is stable and rocks. Check it out on http://plone

  • If you looking for something more then just bugzilla replacement - try TrackStudio http://www.trackstudio.com/ [trackstudio.com]. Java-based, both Windows/Linux are supported.

    Cost some money ($1000 or so), but really differs from others (bugzilla, scarab, mantis, jira, testtrack) - very scalable and flexible tool.

    • I'll second that. Our company (large enterprise) has been using TrackStudio now for about a year. We love it. It is by far the most flexible Issue Management and general tracking system I've seen/used.

      We did a thorough analysis of the issue tracking market before purchasing this product, comprising both Open Source and proprietary products. This product won by a long shot, with Jira coming in second, and Bugzilla, Track+, and many others coming in behind (in some cases VERY FAR behind).

      TrackStudio has
  • Just recently where I work we had a contest.
    A friend and I both had to setup Bugzilla he on a W2K machine and I on a Fedora (FC1) machine. It took him all of half-an-hour and I still didn't have mine running. ( Cue the `what are you doing on slashdot' jokes).
    Really it is easier to set it up on windows!
  • there are just a few lines of code to change for bz to run on win2k, etc.

    grab mysql latest production installer win32
    (install source)
    http://cygwin.com/setup.exe
    install perl, gcc, cvs

    remake mysql perl stuff (have my notes at the office) ./checksetup.pl several times

    fiddle with iis to execute perl for bz dir
    modify the #! lines in perl files which are barking.

    done.

    I can walk you through it in my spare time or if in a hurry, you can get a support contract from my office http://pdinc.us/ [pdinc.us]

  • GTK+ is the problem. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Sunday December 05, 2004 @09:48PM (#11004615)
    The solution to your problem is to place a computer over there with Linux on it, and run BugZilla and all the required support software on that box. Then, put that one window manager that makes things look like Windows XP, and put a window in the middle of the screen labeled "BugZilla Server for Windows XP" with fake but real looking flashy statistics in that window. Nobody will ever know, because people who use Windows and have never been exposed to anything else are too stupid to figure out something like that.
  • You could always use lotus notes (http://www-306.ibm.com/software/lotus/) work order tracking extension. Although the program has become a behemoth of lag in its current incarnation its actually quite effective at keeping track of whats going with who. Although I don't think its the free open source software solution you are looking for. The desktop I use at work is a 500mhz p3 with 128mb of ram running windows XP, Lotus notes runs like a dead turtle on it. Although on the 2ghz p4-m with 2gb of ram laptop
  • and would love to implement Bugzilla for issue tracking but statements like this - 'Making Bugzilla work on Windows is still a painful processes.' in the OS-Specific installation notes don't make it seem reasonable.

    A better set of instructions to use:

    http://www.bugzilla.org/docs/win32install.html [bugzilla.org]

    It's really as simple as following the instructions to get it up and running with the standard configuration. I setup Bugzilla for our project team under Windows and it was a relative snap, much easier than I
  • Bugzilla isnt really designed for windows for a host of reasons covered in the documentation and mentioned here by other posters.

    Although, it is probably the best bug tracking system available in terms of functionality, there are plenty of other non-free bugtrackers available for windows.

    So the choice really comes down to- BUY a lesser known bug tracker for windows, or use Bugzilla on Linux.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

Slashdot Top Deals

One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a new model.

Close