Ask HN: What are you using as an issue tracker in 2018? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are you using as an issue tracker in 2018?

36 pointsxjia45 comments

I went through two startups and decided to use Redmine for both. Tried GitHub once and later migrated over, due to data ownership concerns and bad usability for project management. Tried self-hosted GitLab for a small group but abandoned it later due to inconsistency with internal workflow.

Redmine also has its own shortcomings. As a Xoogler occasionally I really miss the ease of use of Google's internal bug tracker.

I've also heard people using Phabricator if they were in FB. But I never had the chance to give it a try.

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Redmine. With some setup, it’s easily the most powerful, customizable, and intuitive issue tracker I’ve used so far, and it meets my needs for a self-hosted solution. I recommend checking out the following plug-ins:

Redmine Mentions https://www.redmine.org/plugins/redmine-mentions

Redmine Banner https://www.redmine.org/plugins/redmine_banner

Redmine Slack https://www.redmine.org/plugins/redmine-slack

I’m partial to the Agile, Checklists, CMS, and CRM plug-ins from RedmineUp, too. I think they’re essential. There are both free and “pro” versions:

Redmine Agile https://www.redmine.org/plugins/redmine_agile

Redmine Checklists https://www.redmine.org/plugins/redmine_checklists

Redmine CMS https://www.redmine.org/plugins/redmine_cms

Redmine CRM https://www.redmine.org/plugins/redmine_contacts

We still use GitLab, just not for issue tracking anymore. At the free and lower-cost tiers, GitLab lacks a bunch of issue fields (they seem to prescribe using tags for things like priority), and very annoyingly GitLab’s agile board cannot display issue cards from multiple projects simultaneously on one board.

In a true hackerish style, I rolled my own solution: https://github.com/marekjm/issue

Back in 2015, I decided that all the issue tracking systems I knew are too heavy-weight. I don't need kanban, agile, or any other buzz - I just need a simple tool to track my issues. I had several requirements: 1/ it must work off-line, 2/ it must be distrubuted (to allow many people working simultaneously on their off-line clones), 3/ it must work in command line, 4/ it must provide minimum distraction, 5/ it must allow me to tag, and search the issues, and I worked from there.

fast forward to 2018 ...and I'm still using it. It does the job for my Free Software projects, and helps me at work (tested in three companies already). It is definitely not bug-free (but the risk of data-loss should be low), and the installation must be done manually from GitHub, but it Works For Me (tm) ;-)

Sample workflow:

    $ issue open "OH noes, a bug"
    $ issue ls --open
    deadbeef OH noes, a bug
    $ issue slug --git-checkout --git-branch --git deadbeef # or just issue sl -gBC de
    ...hack, hack hack...
    $ git commit -am "Fix"
    $ issue close -g HEAD de
    $ git checkout master
    $ git merge -

By using the `-` as the placeholder for "last active issue" I can make this sequence even shorter. Minimal distraction, no switching between the terminal and the browser, no waiting for slow Web interfaces.

/end of shameless plug

It took me far too long to realise deadbeef was your example issue ID and not a username or something. Maybe I'm a little slow or maybe it's a lack of coffee.

Probably the latter. The "deadbeef" string as a "random" hexadecimal example is pretty common.

We’re using Airtable at work. It’s easily the best issue tracker I’ve ever used, mostly due to the near-infinite customizability. Airtable is just a spreadsheet on steroids, with cool, different views like a kanban view for your spreadsheet. I have absolutely loved it so far. We switched from Jira, so maybe I’m finally just getting over my Stockholm syndrome, but I love Airtable.

Have u tried smart sheet? Isn't it even more powerful than airtable?

Last time I tried airtable it was inpossible to link to a specific single row. Is this still the case?

Was happily using Bugzilla but the company decided to switch to Jira and it's unpleasant to put it politely.

One of my main gripes is the ability to atomically update an issue vs incremental updates. For example, Bugzilla allows you to edit multiple fields then hit commit to save, Jira on the other hand applies changes automatically when you edit certain fields (e.g. assignee). This causes people problems (person gets assignment email before the comment about why it was assigned to them has arrived or vice versa), and automation problems (if you have anything driven by receipt of the emails, you now need to collate many before action can be taken). It may well be possible to configure Jira in a way that's more useful to us, but sadly we've got one mega instance that's supposed to be all things to all people and as such, doesn't do many things well!

Used Redmine before Bugzilla and thought that was pretty good.

To make several changes at once, use the "edit" button in the top left of the issuevderail screen to open the editing modal.

Yes, good thing to point that out. It can be a great help in some cases, but unfortunately that modal dialog blocks access to the comments on the bug, so composing your reply in it can be frustrating.

Yes I can compose my reply in another editor and paste it once it's final. However, IMO an issue tracker is something you use so often that working around these small issues comes at a high cost to me when it should not.

Yeah, I agree that the UI and modal abuse could use some work. I still prefer it over most other issue trackers, though, because it can be queried as a database.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/advanced-...

Is this the query language that you are mentioning? I don't have experience with it but from the documentation it looks very limited.

It supports any type of filtering you could need. It hides the complexity of what I assume behind the scenes are table joins. It's not for quantitative reporting but rather for retrieving manageable lists of relevant issues out of a data base of hundreds to hundreds of thousands. What sort of query would you want to run against an issue tracker that you don't see supported there?

If you're looking for a powerful tracking system, I'll recommend Tuleap[1] and esp. the "Trackers"[2]. If you need to build custom workflows or to adapt tool to an existing internal workflow, it's a tool of choice. We (I'm part of the dev team...) make a strong stand to make the tool adaptable to organizations instead of forcing orgs to adapt to the tool. Oh, and it's open source ;)

[1] https://www.tuleap.org/ [2] https://www.tuleap.org/features/issue-tracking

I like the concept of https://crocagile.com , it is like a game.

Never heard of it before. Looks really fun!

we try our best to keep it light. hit us up if you have any questions or ideas

need to import bitbucket issues

For sure... have bitbucket and github on the roadmap. Right now we're wrapping up a Jira issue import that totally migrates your whole deal over to Croc.

Me too!

yeah we're shooting for "what if Jira gave a shit about the mental health of its customers"

Clubhouse has been a good balance of structure and simplicity. They have a good API for automation too.

https://clubhouse.io

Yep I use Clubhouse for software dev projects as well. It’s great. The longest I’ve kept using an issue tracker.

Pivotal Tracker at work. It's not great and not the worst. Missing a board view so I create several column queries. Asana was the slowest and their boards are completely disconnected.

For small side projects, I tend to just use the repo's issue management. Still looking for a light visual tracker that hits that 'just enough' sweet spot.

Maybe it's because it was an older version of Pivotal (not sure) but the pivotal use I've been exposed to was horrendous.

I previously have enjoyed using ZenHub — it’s a browser plugin that makes GH issues actually useful.

Reasons I like ZenHub:

- everything is just a GitHub issue

- one less login

- GH issues put the content front and center, and let you use markdown. Other issue trackers do a poor job at visually distinguishing the issue metadata and the actuall report.

- Comments are big, first class citizens.

- much lower learning curve compared to Jira, imho.

GitHub issues at current work. For personal projects everything really (Gnome To Do included). I was always wondering how would Basecamp compare but never had a chance to try it (and no I am not spending $100 for my own private Bc). I would also like to see some kickass theme for Redmine.

I've used a lot of Redmine, Phabricator and Jira. Redmine feels really old and dealing with upgrades that will necessarily break one of the plugin needed to make it decent is painful. If you don't touch it, it works just fine though. Phabricator is really cool, requires some good tech knowledge to administrate, biggest pain point was the ci cd apps that were more complex than the rest. Jira is what I'm currently using, works great for all but your Jira admin will decide of your happiness, a bad setup with bad workflow will kill productivity.

> your Jira admin will decide of your happiness, a bad setup with bad workflow will kill productivity.

Ugh, I know all about this. We use Jira where I work and the implementation was so botched and horrible that it easily costs me an hour a day just fighting the awful workflows, required fields, etc., that were put in place by someone who had no idea what they were doing. Not to mention the fact that the same person accidentally wiped out our entire issue database/backlog during a maintenance window one evening.

I’ve worked with Jira before and while it’s not perfect it can be set up pretty well. But, man, when it isn’t, it sure is hell using it.

I haven't used too much many but just analyzing at whole project, using altassian suite makes more sense to me. (even for small team projects.). Using their hosted solutions is quite affordable and you don't want to spend your energy in learning new product or host or learning integrations.

JIRA (tasks + bugs) + Confluence (for any kind of internal docs) is all you need.

Gitlab, has everything I/we need and having everything in one place. Bundled with Slack notifications is also great to provide status update to non-technical users who don’t necessarily have Gitlab open all the time.

GitLab is pretty big for a small group. If you thought redmine was ok, try gogs.

It seems that gogs is specifically for Git hosting rather than issue tracking and project management?

its like github-lite, but self hosted. it has an issue tracker. IIRC when I used redmine, gogs issues supports everything in redmine.

Edit: also phabricator is an open source project.. so you dont have to be at fb... I would compare it to github/gitlab: https://www.phacility.com/phabricator/

There's also taiga [1]. More or less an open source clone of jira.

[1]: https://taiga.io/

Whoa, that's a bold statement.. Taiga doesn't have the air of overengineered, slow monster that JIRA has become.

I meant only in a way of: could be used instead of jira. :)

Manuscript by Fogcreek. https://www.manuscript.com

For personal projects, definitely Trello!

Jira works really well for a small team.

At work we use Trello. It's not suited for it at all.

Jira. When properly configured it's awesome.

Github issues.

Bugzilla

jira

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