In contrast, I don't like scarab. I have several times found issues in OJB (relating to JDO implementations), but they use Scarab. Scarab I regret to say is quite difficult to use (at least if you don't already know how to use it, or maybe only if you are used to using bugzilla, I don't know which). It entirely fails to document itself clearly. Bugzilla has explanitory links all over it's bug creation and query forms, which is something I beleive to be critical to a bug tracking system that will be accessed by users who are not already familiar with it. I have several times tried to use Scarab, and each time it has failed, or it has eaten all my plain text formatting by coalescing all the whtiespace (that makes stack traces really fun to read), or whatnot. I am sure it is user error on my part, but so far I really haven't had time to find out where to read up on how to properly use Scarab. Another annoyance is that after you sign up for an account with scarab it tells you you must "request" membership in a project, which seems to imply that you might be rejected. Really not a very welcoming start.
The systems used at apache should (IMHO) be transparent, user friendly and self explanitory. If they want users to report bugs in their software, it should be easy to learn the system. The current result with Scarab and me, is if I see that a project uses scarab, I only report bugs on their mailing list. I suppose if I decide I want to become a direct contriubuter to a project that uses Scarab, or I have some free time and think of it, I will take the time do the research to figure out how to enter bugs properly in Scarab.
So I wrote the above mostly based on the gut reaction, oh no not another bug system to fight with...
After looking at Jelly's JIRA as linked from their project pages (http://nagoya.apache.org/jira/secure/BrowseProject.jspa?id=10012), it is clear that there are some nice features, it looks nicer than both bugzilla and scarab and is and friendlier than scarab, but I do see one major usability glitch, and possibly a bug in searching. Nowhere did I see a link for Entering a bug. This is the main reason people come to a bug database. How can there not be a link on the front page for it!?!? I have a strong suspeicion that such a link would have appeared had I created an account and logged in, but there was no link for that either... just a log in link. (now I think it is vairly likely if I followed the log in link it would eventually get me to an account creation link, but....) Only my existing knowledge of how web apps and bug trackers tend to work tells me that. Nothing on the page helps you enter a bug. (unless I am blind or stupid, both of which happen occasionally). It could use more explanitory links too, but at least there was a help link (once I saw the really tiny bubble thing in the upper right) that led to a detailed manual (though that manual didn't have a "Enter a bug" section). I didn't have time to browse the manual deeply, but this is still inferior to links on the issue entry page, because the user must leave the page, and search the manual for the item they don't understand, rather than being taken directly to the item. It's hypertext man, take advantage of that!
The entry page is is a stark contrast to bugzilla where you are immediately provided with links to do each of the main tasks (quick search, detailed query, enter bug, get summaries, log in, create account). Whatever reason someone came to a bugzilla front page, (other than by accident) the link is there where they can't miss it. The possible bug in searching is that I did a search on "escape", a word chosen randomly from one of the Popular Bugs (JELLY-55, in which it appeard as "escapeText"), and it failed to find the bug I chose the word from. chosing the word "body" however did bring up that bug. It seems that perhaps JIRA was only finding .*escape and not .*escape.*...
So my order of preference for bug tracking from a "support the novice user" perspective is:
Bugzilla JIRA Scarab
Just my $0.02 worth (I don't get much per word do I?),
-Gus
Henri Yandell wrote:
+1 to any Commons component to JIRA. I far prefer it to Bugzilla.
Hen
On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Noel J. Bergman wrote:
Guys,
There are separate requests on the table to move BETWIXT, CLI, CODEC, JEXL and CONFIGURATION from Bugzilla to JIRA. JELLY is already there.
Are there any other Jakarta Commons projects that want to migrate? Are there any that do NOT want to leave bugzilla?
Right now, each "project" is a component of Commons. If we move to JIRA, I would propose that we create a Project Category for Jakarta Commons, and make each component a project, so that each one can be released separately with its own versioning, etc. We could use a common scheme for permissions, notifications, etc.. Jelly has a dedicate scheme, but I think we could use a single scheme for all of Jakarta Commons.
A bugzilla import will create a single Commons project, but we can then move the issues from the imported project into a new project for each of our real projects.
For each TLP, we should probably have a single permission scheme, but I'm not going to get into that argument today. We can create jakarta-administrator and jakarta-commons-developer groups.
--- Noel
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