Reorganization for Issue Tracking taking place....

[limetech]

We are adding some organization to the software release threads to make it easier to monitor defect and enhancement requests.  This will become clearer over the next few hours as I make this transition.

 

For now, the "unRAID Server Release 5.0-rc3 Available" topic is locked, as I move posts into the new organization.

 

I've looked at many different ways to track issues, such as Bugzilla, Mantis, Google Code, and most recently a MediaWiki IssueTracker extension.  These all have the same problem: they are a pain in the neck to manage, and I don't want to spend a bunch of time managing the issue manager.  For example, I don't want to have separate user logins for the issue tracker as opposed to the forum.  While there is a 'bridge' enhancement for MediaWiki to permit it to use SMF user authentication, there are no such bridges for any of the issue tracking packages out there that I could find.

 

The root problem I'm solving is that issues are reported in the Announcement thread for a release - this is good because at least I know what release the issue pertains to.  But this is bad because they all get jumbled together in one massive thread, and it's very difficult to maintain sanity in trying to interact with the issue reporter.

 

The scheme I came up with will allow any forum member to report Defects (a.k.a., bugs) and/or request Enhancements (a.k.a., new features), with each such request being a separate Topic under a specific release 'board'.  This will let me concentrate on just this issue, and permit moving issues around, and split an issue that may actually be two or more separate issues.

 

Again, this will become clearer as I start putting this together... please bear with me, hopefully I won't screw anything up 

 

[Griz]

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

 

[jaybee]

Great stuff. Keep up the good work.

[chopeta]

I would suggest start from scratch with Redmine since it has all the tools you could need (bug tracking, release versions, wiki, forum, files).

 

But it would be a hell of work to migrate all your data from SMF and Mediawiki to Redmine, that's why I would start from scratch (simple maintenance, better integration, etc.) - for the long-term it should be much better.

 

I've been using Redmine for few years now, no complaints (before we used Mantis and DokuWiki).

 

Just my 2 cents.

 

Awaiting for final v5 and thanks for the good work!

 

Go UnRAID!!!

[dandirk]

Personally I really like the idea... Many people try and get too big for their needs.  I assume UNRaid is a one man company and fairly small, though lots of dedicated and knowledgeable users which do help him allocate time to dev instead of support.

 

Properly used forum posts are easy to search and document, many people are familiar with the format and maintenance is minimal due to the fact that you really have to have a forum anyways.

 

Proper use and maintenance of simple things like sticky "known" issue threads etc would make things much easier to track for both Tom and us.  He knows what to look into and we know that it is on his list.  Everyone is happy.

 

 

[spylex]

Can you add tags to things like [OPEN], [CLOSED], [ADDED] etc?

[Dougy]

given that the support forum is for a RC and not a beta, it would be better if the 'suggestion/ideas' type threads were moved to a different sub-forum.  They have no place in a RC support thread and simple serve to clutter the thread.

[kizer]

There is a Tag mod that would label posts as [sOLVED] however the support for it has been dropped many versions ago. There is a method to make it work in the current version, but that would require some manual hacking of SMF's forum code. Doable, but it would take some effort.

 

Of course you could change [sOLVED] to whatever you want, but it would depend on what and how much effort its really worth in the end.

[devanchya]

i would highly recommend you check out Jira even though it is not free.  Redmind is the closest free tracker to it, as it is a bit of a clone imho. 

[chickensoup]

given that the support forum is for a RC and not a beta, it would be better if the 'suggestion/ideas' type threads were moved to a different sub-forum.  They have no place in a RC support thread and simple serve to clutter the thread.

 

+1

 

A seperate thread for 5.x feature requests is a good idea IMO. I also feel that new topics in the RC-X thread should require pre-approval by a moderator to ensure they are relevent, not an exisiting issue and don't belong in general support or similar (as we have seen quite a few topics that don't belong being moved). It would also help to keep this area de-cluttered as much as possible. Naming of the current status of each topic may also help to keep track of the progress [OPEN], [sOLVED], [RE-TEST RC4], [CLOSED], etc. It would also be worth considering whether to lock a topic once it has been marked as solved/closed to avoid unimportant posts pushing the topic back to the top of the list.