We used to host our own tracking system (based on trac) and we used to rely solely on the subversion repository (svn.zenadmin.org).

I have spent some time moving the subversion repository to github and the tracking system to lighthouse.

move to git

It’s much easier to merge contributions from other people using git and github then by managing patches. Moreover, git is like the current tool I use (svk, a decentralized version control system) but with better support for creating experimental/testing branches without loosing user commits and signatures (who did what).

move to lighthouse

The first reason is that watching the never ending ticket list and reading about new bugs is not nice so working with this list should be as cool as possible. I had some difficulties working with trac: too many features I never used, complicated ‘tags’ (priority, component, keywords). It also took too many mouse clicks to get to the lists I like to watch. Lighthouse does this better, the search feature is really good:

The second reason is about integration features. I love the idea to create tickets through email (it’s fast and easy), I have not yet used the API yet (except for trac to lighthouse transfer), but I’m sure we will have some cool things coming (dashboard widget anyone ?). I also like the github integration with lighthouse (when I think how much time it took me to get all this working on the actual server…).

What I miss is … nice revision numbers. Since I will continue (forever) to keep the subversion repository in sync, anyone can use the revision numbers from subversion if he want (using dates is not that bad either).

update your bookmarks !

• bug tracking: zena.lighthouseapp.com
• code: github.com/zena/zena

PS: we hacked lighthouse a little to keep the same ticket ids in lighthouse as we had in trac…

keeping subversion directory in sync with github

This part was not easy so I wrote an article: github – subversion mirror