Open source alternative to TestDirector or other testing/defect tracking software?

February 5, 2005 10:10 AM

Open source requirements, testing and defect tracking software: any of you have good/bad/middling experience with web-based tools that offer a good alternative to ($$$) TestDirector or its ilk? Preferred platform would be Windows.
posted by nj_subgenius to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Defect tracking software and the like is one of those projects that noone can motivate themselves to write, because noone does that for free. The open source community gets by by using a combination of other components, that seems to work fairly well for even ridiculously large projects.

The traditional strategy of various very large open source projects is to use bug tracking software for everything. So, someone will enter a bug entry that is actually a requirement for the next version, and have it depend on various bug fixes and feature enhancements that will enable that requirement. Bugzilla is by far the most popular defect tracking software for open source projects. It's very very featureful and fairly easy to use, but also very difficult to set up. Several commercial companies I've worked out, including a few that SELL their own defect tracking software, use bugzilla internally. Check out their site for a feature list.

With regards to specific testing tools, the only one I know anything about is Hyades, which is a plugin to the eclipse format. For less integrated approaches, the general tactic is to use some sort of unit testing framework, like JUnit, combined with bugzilla and a custom test running suite. Sorry, there aren't really any combined suites that do what you want, but it may end up that you only need part of what you think you do, and can custom write the remaining parts.
posted by JZig at 11:51 AM on February 5, 2005

By contrast to Bugzilla, which is indeed a bitch to set up and configure, I find the Mantis bug/defect/feature request tracking system to be very simple to install and use. For small to middling SW projects, it works very well. Setup takes about 1/2 hour using the AppServ PHP-Apache-MySQL-on-Windows distribution.

You might also consider FogBugz from Fog Creek software (and the inimitable Joel Spolsky), which costs a bit of money but is supposedly a pleasure to use.

In the realm of packages that are Windows-oriented and NOT Web-based, I've used the inexpensive but featureful Team Coherence, which has defect tracking, version control and build management modules that integrate quite elegantly (available a-la-carte as well). TC is the work of a very dedicated and responsive small company in Scotland.
posted by killdevil at 12:37 PM on February 5, 2005

We use Trac at work. Nice product, extensible, good mailing list and it runs on Windows (though the mailing list traffic suggests it can be difficult to set up).
posted by yerfatma at 11:01 AM on February 6, 2005

As for testing, I've been meaning to look into PBP.
posted by yerfatma at 11:06 AM on February 6, 2005

Response by poster: Thanx everybody - interesting nobody mentioned scarab... have any of you used it but left it out if your list?
posted by nj_subgenius at 12:39 PM on February 6, 2005