Warning: This is personal opinion, and I'm going to be climbing up on my
soapbox here for a bit. If a bunch of folks want to work on the parent's
project, don't let me stop you, but I feel that a counter point here
might be useful.
Hi, I agree: a) public relation isn't a strength of Trac ;-)
Nor should it be. I want Trac to be awesome. It is. PR doesn't help with
that. Sure, it helps more people know about Trac's awesomeness, but
viral advertising (word of mouth, blog posts, podcasts, etc.) is free.
Further, the last thing I want is this list being invaded by a bunch of
clueless n00bs who need to go RTFM. Indeed, I remember listening to
someone from a F/OSS project (inkscape, I think, but I could be wrong),
who was talking about how they tried to make it easier to use and came
out with a Windows installer, and then all of a sudden they get deluged
with people who have zero clue. The estimate I heard was that it set
their project back a year because they had to deal with the pile of
totally useless bug reports, endless basic questions, etc.
b) it's
really hard to explain business people why to introduce Trac
I don't understand why you're doing this. It's free. Find a box, set it
up, start using it. Share it with other users, and I think you'll irally
infect your organization. Productivity goes up, and folks are happy
about it.
Alternatively, lot of arguments can be made about improved productivity,
but unless you're comparing it to no process at all, the numbers are
essentially meaningless anyway. In the end, I find it comes down to
someone installing a bunch of them, setting them up, letting people beat
on them, and doing a comparative analysis of a whole pile of very soft
criteria.
However, the only real test is running it as your production process for
3-6 months.
That said, Trac may not always win. If what you have meets your needs,
then why bother convincing people to move to Trac? This is a pragmatic
decision about worker efficiency, not a religious war.
c) the first steps to install and configure aren't documented for
non-developers
Why should non-developers be installing it anyway? This is a job for IT.
(Defined as "developers who serve internal customers rather than
external customers"). If this is not the case in your organization, than
your organization is broken, and you have bigger problems.
d) running and maintaining Trac often requires
developer or command line skills
Which the people maintaining it should have, or they should learn them.
Essentially, your argument boils down to this:
Trac is too hard because it requires people to learn skills.
I look at it as:
These are skills that people maintaining Trac should have. If they
don't, they should learn them. If they are unwilling to learn them, then
perhaps they should find another line of work, because this is what is
required for proper system administration. You need to understand how
the system *actually works*.
better: how to install Trac _WITHOUT_ going to the command line (gui
based installers for Linux + Windows).
On Linux, you can always just get the premade package for Trac from your
repository.
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