From f38377f2dbe870effb400f6f8f38a84cac63ebd2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Jez Cope Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2016 08:50:33 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] Post: SC Track --- content/post/2016-09-sc-track.md | 94 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 94 insertions(+) create mode 100644 content/post/2016-09-sc-track.md diff --git a/content/post/2016-09-sc-track.md b/content/post/2016-09-sc-track.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d3a7837 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/post/2016-09-sc-track.md @@ -0,0 +1,94 @@ +--- +title: "Software Carpentry: SC Track; hunt those bugs!" +description: | + For the SC Track competition + entrants were asked to design a better bug-tracker. +slug: sc-track +date: 2016-09-12T08:50:15+01:00 +draft: false +type: post +topics: +- Technology +tags: +- Software Carpentry +- Web archaeology +- Bug trackers +- GitHub +series: swc-archaeology +--- + +> This competition will be an opportunity for the next wave of developers to show their skills to the world --- and to companies like ours. +> --- *Dick Hardt, ActiveState (quote taken from [SC Track page][SC Track])* + +[SC Track]: https://web.archive.org/web/20071014042747/http://software-carpentry.com/sc_track/index.html + +All code contains bugs, +and all projects have features that users would like +but which aren't yet implemented. +Open source projects tend to get more of these +as their user communities grow and start requesting improvements to the product. +As your open source project grows, +it becomes harder and harder to keep track of and prioritise +all of these potential chunks of work. +What do you do? + +The answer, as ever, +is to make a to-do list. +Different projects have used different solutions, +including mailing lists, forums and wikis, +but fairly quickly a whole separate class of software evolved: +the [bug tracker][], +which includes such well-known examples as +[Bugzilla](https://www.bugzilla.org/), +[Redmine](http://www.redmine.org/) +and the mighty [JIRA](https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira). + +[bug tracker]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bug_tracking_system + +Bug trackers are built entirely around such requests for improvement, +and typically track them through workflow stages +(planning, in progress, fixed, etc.) +with scope for the community to discuss and add various bits of metadata. +In this way, +it becomes easier both to prioritise problems against each other +and to use the hive mind to find solutions. + +Unfortunately most bug trackers are big, complicated beasts, +more suited to large projects with dozens of developers and hundreds or thousands of users. +Clearly a project of this size +is more difficult to manage and requires a certain feature set, +but the result is that the average bug tracker +is non-trivial to set up for a small single-developer project. + +The [SC Track][] category asked entrants to propose a better bug tracking system. +In particular, +the judges were looking for something +easy to set up and configure +without compromising on functionality. + +The winning entry was a [bug-tracker called Roundup][Roundup], +proposed by Ka-Ping Yee. +Here we have another tool which is still in active use and development today. +Given that there is now a huge range of options available in this area, +including the mighty [github][], +this is no small achievement. + +[Roundup]: http://roundup.sourceforge.net/index.html +[github]: https://github.com/ + +These days, of course, +github has become something of a *de facto* standard +for open source project management. +Although ostensibly a version control hosting platform, +each github repository also comes with +a built-in issue tracker, +which is also well-integrated with the "pull request" workflow system +that allows contributors to submit bug fixes and features themselves. + +Github's competitors, +such as GitLab and Bitbucket, +also include similar features. +Not everyone wants to work in this way though, +so it's good to see that there is still a healthy ecosystem +of open source bug trackers, +and that Software Carpentry is still having an impact.