Let's say you have a project that looks like this
project +- src/main/java/Hello.java +- issues/issue-001.md +- pom.xml
All I need is a simple directory issues to get going. Now I have a place to track my issue! First issue issue-000.md should be what your project is about. For example:
/id=issue-001 /createdon=2012-12-16 18:07:08 /type=bug /status=new /resolution= /from=Zemian /to= /found= /fixed= /subject=A simple Java Hello program # Updated on 2012-12-16 18:07:08 We want to create a Maven based Hello world program. It should print "Hello World."
I choose .md as file extension for intending to write comments in Markdown format. Since it's a text file, you do what you want. To be more structured, I have added some headers metadata for issue tracking. Let's define some here. I would propose to use these and formatting:
/id=issue-<NUM>
/createdon=<TIMESTAMP>
/type=feature|bug|question
/status=new|reviewing|working|onhold|testing|resolved
/resolution=fixed|rejected|duplicated
/from=<REPORTER_FROM_NAME>
/to=<ASSIGNEE_TO_NAME>
/found=<VERSION_FOUND>
/fixed=<VERSION_FIXED>
That should cover most of the bug and feature development issues. It's not cool to write software without a history of changes, including these issues created. So let's use a source control. I highly recommend you to use Mercurial hg. You can create and initialize a new repository like this.
bash> cd project bash> hg init bash> hg add bash> hg commit -m "My hello world project"
Now your project is created and we have a place to track your issues. Now it's simple text file, so use your favorite text editor and edit away. However, creating new issue with those header tags is boring. It will be nice to have a script that manage it a little. I have a Groovy script issue.groovy (see at the end of this article) that let you run reports and create new issues. You can add this script into your project/issues directory and you can instantly creating new issue and querying reports! Here is an example output on my PC:
bash> cd project bash> groovy scripts/issue.groovy Searching for issues with /status!=resolved Issue: /id=issue-001 /status=new /subject=A simple Java Hello program 1 issues found. bash> groovy scripts/issue.groovy --new /type=feature /subject='Add a unit test.' project/issues/issue-002.md created. /id=issue-002 /createdon=2012-12-16 19:10:00 /type=feature /status=new /resolution= /from=Zemian /to= /found= /fixed= /subject=Add a unit test. bash> groovy scripts/issue.groovy Searching for issues with /status!=resolved Issue: /id=issue-000 /status=new /subject=A simple Java Hello program Issue: /id=issue-002 /status=new /subject=Add a unit test. 2 issues found. bash> groovy scripts/issue.groovy --details /id=002 Searching for issues with /id=002 Issue: /id=issue-002 /createdon=2012-12-16 19:10:00 /found= /from=Zemian /resolution= /status=new /type=feature /subject=Add a unit test. 1 issues found. bash> groovy scripts/issue.groovy --update /id=001 /status=resolved /resolution=fixed 'I fixed this thang.' Updating issue /id=issue-001 Updating /status=resolved Updating /resolution=fixed Update issue-001 completed.
The script give you some quick and consistent way to create/update/search issues. But they are just plain text files! You can just as well fire up your favorite text editor and change any any thing you want. Save and even commit it into your source repository. All will not lost.
I hope this issue tracking script can get your next project started quickly. Let me know what you do you think!
Enjoy!
Zemian
And here is my issue.groovy script.
Oh, and of course I eat my own *dog food. Here are few issues that I started to track the issue.grooy itself.
Thanks for your grateful informations, am working in FNT software solutions, so it will be helpful info for my works.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good piece of code, driving me to new ideas about Bug tracking ! Thanks to you !
ReplyDeleteMaybe, adding a small webserver to serve the bug list or maybe modifying the script to make it produicing a "issues list" in md format with its id, description( or comment) and status.
you 'll be able to view the list in a "human readable format", directly on the git repo.
Anyway, storing Data into a DVCS is a great idea !
Thanks for the feedback McGivrer. I don't have any plan to add web interface yet. I've intentionally kept the script small so it's manageable without fancy features. However you can explore web front end with Groovy pretty easily. (There is an old blog post that show you how to setup Groovy webapp.)
ReplyDeleteHave fun!