RT vs Bugzilla

Mon Mar 6 11:14:17 PST 2006

Paul M. Moriarty wrote:
> In short, and in my experience, bugzilla is well-suited to dealing
> with bugs and RT is well suited to dealing with requests.  While
> there is some overlap in funtionality, using a bug tracking tool
> for request tracking is a lot like using a 40-ft RV for a daily
> 5-mile commute.  It works, but there are more efficient solutions.

I concur.  I use RT and have some some time.  (I'm not running 3.4.5.)

One major thing that request-tracking tools need to do (and which even 
RT won't do without some added effort) is to encode the idea of 
sleep/wake, or blocked/runnable, or (as we called it once) 
freeze/unfreeze.  The idea is that at some point you can't make any 
progress on an issue (left a message, waiting for a part to arrive, 
etc.), so it blocks.  You give it a date, and on that date it becomes 
available again to work on.  If they didn't call you back by then, you 
call them again; if the package didn't arrive on time, you go hunting 
for it; etc.

That, combined with some basic priority scheme, gives you a queue where 
you can truly work on the top thing on the list, not just cherry-pick 
which of the top 100 is the most interesting (thus guaranteeing that 80 
or so of them will never get worked on).

Priority schemes are weak in RT as shipped, but no better in 
bug-tracking systems I have seen, or in other commercial RT-like things 
such as Remedy.  They all take significant effort -- and thought -- to 
set up.  I have yet to spend the energy to get RT to automatically make 
things get "worse" with age.  But here's how I dodge it, for a couple of 
queues:

5 8,18,22 * * * /opt/imap-partners/bin/getrttix -c 24 | Mail -E -s "New 
support tickets over 24h old" jxh at imap-partners.net
3 8,18 * * * /opt/imap-partners/bin/getrttix -c 48 | Mail -E -s "New 
support tickets OVER 48h OLD" <somewhere that makes a noise>

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