Open Testware Reviews

Defect tracking tools survey

Reviewed: 2003-Feb-10
Testingfaqs.org category: Defect Tracking Tools

A defect tracking tool is a fundamental tool for most software development projects. Essentially, a defect tracking tool is a database of bug reports, with a front end that facilitates actions such as filing new bug reports, changing the state to reflect the progress of the work done to address the bug, and generating reports on the bug data. Note that I tend to use the term "bug", though for some reason I decided that "defect" sounded spiffier when I named the Defect Tracking Tools list on testingfaqs.org. I use the two terms interchangeably.

There is a bewildering array of defect tracking tools to choose from. There are a total of 88 of them currently listed on testingfaqs.org and several more still to add, which makes Defect Tracking Tools by far the largest category on the site. It's a wonder that the market can support so many of them. This is also the largest category of freeware tools on the site, with 13 currently listed. The tools covered by this survey are listed below, with links to their testingfaqs.org entries.

The scope of the defect tracking tools list focuses on the needs of a software development project. I don't include configuration management tools that have a defect tracking component if that component can't be installed separately from the configuration management tool.

There are also a number of freeware trouble ticket/help desk tools available. These tools focus on the needs of an IT help desk and don't tend to be tailored for software developers. They are not included in this survey or the defect tracking tools list. I'd like to hear from anyone who is using a tool that does both trouble ticketing and defect tracking well.

There are a several defect tracking tools listed on testingfaqs.org that are available as a free web service, but they limit the number of users. These are not marked as freeware and are not listed in this survey.

Of the tools in this survey, the one you're most likely to recognize is Bugzilla. On the Bugzilla web page, it says "It is now the de-facto standard defect-tracking system against which all others are measured," and to some extent, that's right. However, several of the other tools are also used by some high-profile projects, so Bugzilla is definitely not the only game in town. Bugzilla has forked in a few directions, though its cousins all seem to be dead ends. One Buzgilla off-shoot that's still in use on a few projects, including OpenOffice.org, is Issuezilla. However, I haven't found a home page or the source code for Issuezilla, so it is excluded from the survey.

Another prominent tool not included on this list is the SourceForge.net Tracker. I haven't been able to determine whether it's related to the Tracker listed above, whether it's available separately from the entire SourceForge software suite, and oddly enough, it doesn't seem to be open source.

Of the tools listed here, all have open source licenses except for Abuky and Buggit. Abuky does not have a license specified. Buggit is distributed only as a Windows binary. At least two are beta quality at best - Roundup and Mantis. Several others are likely not production quality yet. Some don't seem to be actively maintained. For example, the Jitterbug web site is sorely out of date. For the others, it will take more research to distinguish the stable tools from the abandoned ones.

All of the tools listed have a web interface, and most use a web server as the primary user interface. Several tools also have email interfaces for submitting and adding comments to bug reports, and a few rely primarily on email as their user interface. That means that you're likely to be able to use these tools from any client platform. As a group, the freeware defect tracking tools are more likely to provide a full range of features via a web interface than the commercial tools I've seen.

The server software is often more platform-sensitive. As best as I can tell, these tools run only on one or more Unix-like systems: Debian Bug Tracking System, GNATS, Helis, and Jitterbug. Tracker requires the Zope application server, and I haven't yet figured out which platforms it supports. The rest should work on several Windows and Unix platforms.