Bugzilla on Windows? 111
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?"
virtualization (Score:2, Funny)
Mantis! (Score:5, Informative)
Damien
Re:Mantis! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mantis! (Score:2)
Damien
Re:Mantis! (Score:2)
RT on Windows (Score:5, Informative)
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. :)
Re:RT on Windows (Score:2)
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
Re:RT on Windows (Score:2)
Re:RT on Windows (Score:2)
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)
Issue Tracking (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Issue Tracking (Score:1)
Re:Issue Tracking (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Issue Tracking (Score:2)
Integrate with version control and project planning systems.
Re:Issue Tracking (Score:2)
CVSZilla [cvszilla.org]
ScumBug [asu.edu] Both provide integration between Bugzilla and CVS. CVSZilla also integrates with Subversion. Jason Pollock
Re:Issue Tracking (Score:2)
Re:Issue Tracking (Score:1)
Re:Issue Tracking (Score:2)
Report generation.
Re:Issue Tracking (Score:2)
Most report code that I write is perfectly capable of generating reports across multiple database connections.
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)
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)
Re:Just went through this (Score:2)
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)
Re:Cygwin (Score:3, Informative)
Fogbugz (Score:4, Informative)
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].
Try FogBugz (Score:1)
CoLinux (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a list (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Your sig (Score:1)
Linux on VMware on Windows! (Score:1, Redundant)
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
Re:Linux on VMware on Windows! (Score:1)
no, it's a Linux-Win.
no problem (Score:2, Informative)
user mode linux. (Score:1, Redundant)
Anyone tried it? Or is user mode linix just a development toy?
Re:user mode linux. (Score:1)
Good Coffee (Score:2)
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
Re:Good Coffee (Score:2)
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
Bugzilla (Score:2)
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
Re:Bugzilla (Score:2)
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)
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.
Re:Missing something? (Score:2)
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
recently there's been a lot of activity in bringing the documtation up to speed, ready for the 2.20 release.
-byron jones
virtual machine (Score:2)
How about Scarab? (Score:1)
Give it a spin? (Score:1, Flamebait)
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.
Re:Give it a spin? (Score:2)
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
Jesus, chill dude! (Score:2)
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.
Define "alien" (Score:1)
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.
I stand corrected. (Score:2)
I stand corrected.
Re:Define "alien" (Score:2)
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
Slashdot readers from Canada vs. from Mexico (Score:1)
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!"
Use coLinux ! (Score:1)
It's just boilerplate (Score:1)
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.
Would Cygwin or Mingw help? (Score:2)
Altassian JIRA (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Altassian JIRA (Score:1)
install cheap PC with Linux on it (Score:1)
why don't you just install a chap ($20) old PC with Linux and run bugzilla on it?
FogBugz (Score:2)
From the README =) (Score:3, Funny)
"You have installed Windows." (WONTFIX)
or
"My computer crashes all the time." (NOTABUG, BUTMANYBUGS)
Enjoy! =)
Well, that's what theming was created for? (Score:2)
Slap a XP-teletubby look on some desktop environment, and presto.
Another resource (Score:1)
--LWM
Bad Bugzilla, BAD! (Score:1)
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.
100% Windows is doubtful (Score:1, Offtopic)
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?
Re:100% Windows is doubtful (Score:1)
It's primarily sold as a LANE (ATM) services box, it has excellent LES/BUS performance.
Mantis! (Score:2, Informative)
it will run on Windows too
http://mantisbt.org/
SCARAB or JIRA (Score:2)
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
My story (Score:1)
Why not Plone and Issue Collector, ? (Score:1)
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
TrackStudio ? (Score:1)
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.
Re:TrackStudio ? (Score:1)
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
It's not painfull at all (Score:1)
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!
we have plenty of windows only clients.... (Score:1)
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)
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)
Lotus notes (Score:1)
Actually pretty simple (Score:2)
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
2 choices (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Just use BSD or Linux or OS X, forget about win (Score:4, Insightful)
Really, if the person says you can not go to linux at his shop, just take him for his word. If you have nothing useful to add at this point, please keep it to yourself.
Or go ahead and say it anyways and just get mod'd down.
Re:Just use BSD or Linux or OS X, forget about win (Score:4, Informative)
You get a PII with 128 megs of ram that won't take XP or Win2kpro well, ask your boss to let you run some test or something, install linux, and presto, it works.
Then, when the company looks at the cost of keeping the PII as-is versus migrting to windows, they'll keep the PII.
Repeat.
I've done this. I'm on the third box.
Fortune 500.
Re:Just use BSD or Linux or OS X, forget about win (Score:2)
And I'll bet that you are the guy maintaining these boxes. I managed to convert three PII systems in my lab to FreeBSD. I wrote up an installation guide to do it. I trained someone how to do it. There have been exactly zero complaints on these machines.
But I'm not the guy maintaining these machines. I only did it as a proof of principle. To the guy in charge of the lab, a brand spanking new Dell/Windows system with flat panel monitor, is what's easiest. Besides the $1
Re:Just use BSD or Linux or OS X, forget about win (Score:2)
But maintaining those boxes is still easier than winworld.
Also. I have told mgmt that if they want backup, they need to move thr projects to production. They know.
Re:Just use BSD or Linux or OS X, forget about win (Score:3, Insightful)
I politely disagree.
All issues of whether bugzilla is really the right choice or not aside, this is precisely how Linux started making inroads in other corporations. Some tech guy needed a quick and easy way to do some sort of server where that server was way more trivial to implement on Linux than on Windows. So they quietly put Linux on that box, set up the server, and said to everyone, "Point your Internet Explorer to...", and was hailed a hero. Rare would be the person who would even think that the
Re:Just use BSD or Linux or OS X, forget about win (Score:1)
Re:Just use BSD or Linux or OS X, forget about win (Score:2)
I've done exactly this... I have Mantis, dotProject, SugarCRM, and a few other things running internally that no one even wonders where they are.
And all the while, they're running on a little box under my desk.
And Mantis [mantisbt.org] will run on an IIS box once you put php on it and have a mysql database somewhere.
Rubbish (Score:1)
Win2k, Apacehe, mySQL, PHP. Jobs a good'un
Re:Rubbish (Score:1)
Well I'm the kind of coder that has never written anything for a non-windows platform in my life. I can barely install a linux distro, but I managed to work out Bugzilla by using their website documentation. Its easy.
Re:Just use BSD or Linux or OS X, forget about win (Score:2)
Slashdotter: Use Linux and ditch Windows!
Way to just ignore the parameters of the question. When asked "what's 4/3?" in school did you just change the question to "4/2" to make it easier an expect it to be correct?
Re:Just use BSD or Linux or OS X, forget about win (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, as a dev, I routinely have to listen to customers and write up requirements from what they say they need, their environment, etc.
If I pulled the "I don't care what you want, I'm doing X" routine, nobody would ever hire me again.
Re:Leave (Score:1)
Simply showing them Bugzilla does not demonstrate that it is the best solution. You'll need to do your homework and locate other solutions (including some which do run on your company's standard platform) and compare features. If you can find Bugzilla functionality which is important but not present (or not impleme
Re:Leave (Score:3, Insightful)
Is bugzilla the right solution?
Your post is heavily assuming that Bugzilla is the right choice, actually, it's inferring that Bugzilla is the _only_ reasonable choice and that anyone that doesn't agree is a bigot and ignorant. Harsh. Your suggested course of action wouldn't get many people very far in this world. Don't like my way? then f'u. How's that supposed to help?
Anyways, my po
Re:Leave (Score:2)
In practise having an established OS has *big* ramifications. Most companies have an IT department whose job is to keep an eye on all important upgrades needed. Reckon they'll support Linux just bcos your bug-tracking server needs it? No way. It needs some different skills, so chances are that the IT department will need to hire someone (maybe part-time) to do setup and administration for Linux. Also you're talking a different anti-
Re:Leave (Score:4, Interesting)
But you're right that Windows shops don't want to have to employee a Linux administrator because of one application.
I've seen companies with Windows workstations and servers get roped into being a VAR for a Linux app and from that experience setup an internal Linux server. The number of Linux-based solutions increased since my hire, but it was always an issue of who else could support it if I wasn't there (sick, dead, quit, etc). Meanwhile, there are some people who you will find are viciously pro-Windows with a higher rank.. some people don't care what something does, how much it saves, but care that it isn't from someone that they trust.
Luckily, many killer business apps are now coming from IBM, Novell, and Sun.. and they're working on Linux. Considering Exchange? Consider GroupWise. Considering Microsoft Office? Consider OpenOffice.
I find that it is a lot easier to push Linux and Linux based solutions to management if it isn't from "Linus Torvalds", "ESR", or "RMS" (etc).. but from trusted sources like Novell.
I've convinced users to move from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice on the premise that they aren't using "freeware", they're using software from Sun Microsystems.
The idea used to be that to get users onto Linux there would need to be a killer app only for Linux. However, to convert users you don't want to give them a reason to leave Windows, you want to give them no reason to keep paying more money to run the same software.
We need applications to run on Windows AND Linux from brands (Windows) users already trust. I've found that users don't want a new word processor AND a new instant messanger AND a new web browser, etc. Firefox, OpenOffice, and other applications are making themselves available under Windows and will give users fewer reasons to stay with Windows.
Re:Leave (Score:1, Insightful)
One of the rules is about mindshare.
Want to type a document? Use Word.
Thats generally how people work. Very clever marketing. It used to be Ami Pro or Works or whatever. Internet Explorer. clever name. My mum could guess what it does, Firefox... nope she's gonna get confused. Thunderbird? who the hell thinks these names up? Geeks, not marketing departments. I love Linux and I run Gentoo on all my computers, but Microsoft proves how use
Re:Don't help this guy (Score:1)