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Using Dropbox to Track Bugs

29 points by uuilly ↗ HN
Being a tiny startup looking for ways to save money, we discovered the best, cheapest bug tracking software out there. It's dropbox (or dropbugz). Simply make a folder called "bugs" in your dropbox and put a "done" directory in it.

-Each bug is a .txt file whose name is the description of the bug.

-Dropbox keeps track of who creates / edits files so if someone botches a description you can always figure out who wrote it up and when. (Unix does a decent job of this too.)

-You can assign bugs by putting "#fixer_name" at the top of the file and grepping for "#fixer_name" on the command line.

-When bugs are done you move them to the "done" folder. If you duplicate a title it overwrites, but dropbox has your back w/ revision edits.

-You can preform any sort of command line voodoo to slice and dice your bugs.

-You know when bugs are posted or fixed through the dropbox notifications.

-You never have to leave the command line and go to a web app to enter bugs. The result for us is that we enter more bugs.

-You can casually browse your bugs using the preview feature on mac:

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/147719/bugs.jpg

We didn't have the money for FogBugz and we were using BugZilla which is so miserable that we resorted to not using it. There are certainly features dropbugz lacks, but for basic bug tracking for a small team, it is awesome. And any feature you want to add is just a script and a chron job away. I've used a bunch of web-based bug trackers in the corporate and startup world and this is the only one I've ever liked.

I look forward to hearing HN's thoughts on extending this wonderful tool...

Big ups to

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=martian

for coming up w/ the idea.

23 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 30.9 ms ] thread
ashleyw
Good idea, I prefer either Basecamp or Lighthouse though (both affordable).
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
fallentimes
Good idea, but have you looked in to lighthouse?
uuilly
Right on, it looks really nice, but w/ dropbugz you never leave the command line. You never log in to a site or search a DB or tag things etc etc. It's just ls'ing grep'ing and vi'ing. I find it less tedious and thus I'm more prone to log bugs as I develop / test.

I say again though, I'm working w/ a small team of developers and my needs are modest. And if dropbugz fails me I'll check out lighthouse.

jhancock
no offense to the good work at lighthouse, but I feel it would more useful to have lightweight bugtracking integrated into github. I'm sure people could come up with useful command line shortcuts to integrate bug reporting into github as has been reported here using dropbox.
uuilly
And furthermore, you can set

bug=your/dropbugz/folder

in a .bashrc file ON dropbox. Have all your ~/.bashrc's on different machines source the one from dropbox and you're set. Now entering a bug is just:

echo "App crashes on launch" > $bug/epic_fail.txt

delano
Ya, the command line is your friend.

We do something really similar using git. Our "done" directories are dated ("done-08-q4") and we also have "testing" and "delayed" directories. Issues are moved to the testing directory in the same commit as the code changes and then to the done directory with a release.

toxik
Why not just set up a Trac?

You apparently knew how to do it with BugZilla, so why not Trac?

uuilly
You give me too much credit. I pay for secure offsite svn. They were providing us w/ bugzilla :)

I clearly didn't do much homework on this. But I stand by our solution even if it was made in ignorance. It is the only bug tracking tool mentioned (besides the guy using git, good idea btw) that doesn't interrupt the workflow.

bayareaguy
Who do you use for svn? I'm really suprised anyone would offer bugzilla when trac has integrated support for svn.
run4yourlives
You could use svnrepository, which would give you trac instead of bugzilla for like $4 a month. I use them a lot for my stuff.
babul
Redmine (http://www.redmine.org/) is also a good choice (free, fast, easy to setup and use), especially if you want other project management features.

We use it, and are happy with it.

icco
Trac is amazing, I've been using devjavu.com for secure hosting, and it comes with svn+trac. But trac and svn are really easy to set up on a linux server if you have the time and interest.
koraybalci
if you are a small team and you don't want to waste time on logging in to a client such as trac, etc, why not just use plain paper (postit?) and a pen, pinned on the office wall.. that sure is cheap and has all the perks of your system..

and yes, I am being sarcastic..

rshao
Doesn't work if they work from home.
gregwebs
bug tracking should be integrated with the version control system. If you use git there is ticgit or something like that which just maintains a simple file of bugs. But when you checkout a branch you can see what bugs are open on that branch, and when the branch merges, it will merge its closed bugs.
tdavis
This is my biggest argument, which is why I use Lighthouse since it integrates very easily with Github. I don't like my bugs to be meaningless text files; it's far more useful to have them tied to VC so I can see what work has gone into a bug/feature, which commit fixed something, etc.

I suppose I could retain the "never leave the command line" thing by composing e-mails to Lighthouse for new bugs in mutt via vim, but that seems like more work than tabbing over to the Lighthouse Keeper window...

wenbert
http://xp-dev.com the "bug tracker" isn't that complete yet. and for now, only one team member is able to access one project (yikes) but they do allow hosting of commercial projects. for free ;-)