[rt-users] RT for bug tracking?

[Michael S. Liebman]

At 04:23 PM 10/24/2003, Eric Siegerman wrote:
>So, I guess my question really is, what is it about RT that makes
>it *less* suitable for bug tracking than are things that bill
>themselves as "bug tracking systems"?

I guess I wouldn't be totally loony if I tried comparing RT to a system 
like Remedy ARS. With the workflow and custom field improvements in RT3, 
the system is flexible enough to do almost anything you want it to. That's 
one of the strengths of Remedy. You can use one tool to build inventory, 
asset, bug, support, and new-fangled widget tracking. That kind of 
flexibility and workflow support is the direction that RT seems to be 
heading in.

The one down side to RT and Remedy is that you need to do the work to get 
the tools to your liking. But they are exactly to your liking. Not someone 
else's idea of how your workflow should be. I use RT for bug tracking for 
software that I am the sole developer for. I don't need to have extremely 
strict workflow. I don't need precise differentiation of priority and 
severity. But I also use it for project tracking for a larger group. We'll 
probably grow into a change and approval tracking system in the future and 
I'm confident that RT will be able to handle it.

Now I'll admit I haven't done as much development work on RT as I have 
Remedy, but I've been much more satisfied as a developer working with RT 
and molding it to my needs. I'm looking forward to better Perl support for 
Subversion so I can start working on integrating it into my RT bug tracking 
workflow.

I hope that helps answer your question, as well as taking care of my desire 
to praise Jesse and the other fine contributors to RT.

Michael


-- 
Michael S. Liebman                      m-liebman at northwestern.edu
                 http://msl521.freeshell.org/
"I have vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals."
        -Paul Newman in "Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid"