The SQA2 Blog: Advice Center, General
Software applications consist of thousands of line code. In those lines of code, there are always bugs lurking around. You must hunt down and fix bugs before selling an application or delivering it to a customer. Simply tracking bugs is a full-time job. You further complicate the job with an increasing complex application and developers located in different parts of the world. A collaborative bug tracking system is a must have. There are many paid and free (open source) bug tracking/issue tracking systems available. Finding the right bug tracking system can be difficult especially for companies with low budgets. Here is a brief summary of the top 5 open source bug tracking systems.
MantisBT
Mantis is a popular option that has been used by application testers and test managers for years. It is free, open source, and stable, in addition, and most importantly, it is user friendly. MantisBT is a web-based bug tracking system developed with PHP and MySQL. You can install it on any Windows or Linux Server. Its community users frequently make updates and provide help to the users. Among its main features are: language localization, easy setup, different access levels, issue change history, and time tracking. Furthermore, it has powerful reporting systems, attachment auto preview, multiple database system support and many others. You can find the complete feature list here.
Bugzilla
Bugzilla is another powerful, robust, and popular open source bug tracking system powered by Mozilla and is very stable. Large organizations like – Red Hat, NASA, Facebook, Nokia, Yahoo and New York Times use it. The creators used Perl and MySQL to program Bugzilla. Therefore, it comes with all of the standard bug tracking system features you’d expect along with an optimized database structure for high performance, intelligent search tool, integrated email system and much more.
Redmine
Developed using Ruby on Rails, Redmine is a newer alternative. It can be difficult to install on servers. However, it supports different database systems like – MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, SQLite and MySQL. Additionally, it requires SCM binaries, ImageMagick and the Ruby OpenID library. Overall, among many features, Redmine supports multiple projects, role based access control, Gantt charts and calendars, files and document management.
WebIssues
WebIssues is an up and coming issue tracker available in both desktop and web client versions. Webissue is open source, cross platform, and PHP and MySQL based. It is a highly customizable issue tracking system that supports multiple database servers – MySQL, PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server.
The Bug Genie
As its name suggests, Bug Genie is an extremely user friendly, wizard based issue tracking system. Therefore it is designed with lots of flexibility. Developed with PHP and MySQL, it supports multiple database systems and multiple languages.
Reach Out for Bug Tracking Solutions
Interested in an objective assessment of a bug tracking tool for your organization? Find out which tool is the right fit for your project. Reach out to us and an experienced QA professional will help you determine the right solution for your organization.
