pcplantdb

["John Schinnerer" <john@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

> It might well do us for now. I suspect the core dev
> team will be small.

It probably would if it were friendlier to the less technical among us.
Bugzilla by default for example is pretty wordy, but that is configurable
and along with more constraints on input helps to give us consistency in
issue reporting.

It's *much* easier to "get" (force :-) people to pick for example
"component" and "Operating system" and "issue type" and "severity" and
"priority" and so on from a limited list of options in a drop-down than to
get them to even enter it all (let alone consistently) in an all-in-one
text field as in sourceforge.

And, I'm hoping we do attract some additional developers, perhaps for
alternate front ends for example, and users/testers from the general
permaculture and related community and so on.  Then it gets really ugly if
issue entry is done ad hoc in an all-in-one text field as in sourceforge
tracker.

Plus it is easier to search and sort issues, and so on and so on.

> In the above project, the vast majority of our bug reports
> come from the user forum. Only a very small number of
> bugs are submitted using bug database.

I would have a user forum be for conversations, FAQ, howtos, etc. - if
someone had a specific bug to report the user forum would direct them to
the bug DB, which I would make as user-friendly as possible.

> I'd be interested to know problems you've had with these.

There's nothing testers will rant on so much as the deficiencies of bug
databases... ;-)
I've yet to see one that didn't have at least a few annoying problems...I
used a multi-thousand-dollar system that wouldn't save a filter set or
even a single filter between sessions!  Some have poor UIs, some have
awkward or little if any workflow implementation, no cross-referencing,
etc. etc..
I've mostly seen commercial products, and licensing is usually pretty
expensive (especially for small operations).

> I've not much experience with these (apart from looking
> at the Mozilla bug db, getting scared and running away fast).

It's imposing at first.  I need to dig into it more before I'd go with it
for sure.  Some of the imposing can be reduced by what the UI presents to
users and how it's configured.  I think it's one of the most mature
full-feature open source trackers available though.

More news as it happens...on the road at present...
cheers,
John S.


John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
------------------------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Design & Technology Services
People - Place - Learning - Integration
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net