I seem to have an addiction when it comes to finding the best bug tracker out there - I’ve never been really been satisfied with the ones I’ve used in the past, and I’m just too lazy to write my own. As a result, I’ve ended up playing and installing a bunch of different apps, trying to find the bug tracker I like the most.

Trac

Until recently, I’ve been happy with Trac. Trac is a great system, but it has one major limitation that bugs me - it’s fairly difficult to manage more than one project with it. As far as I can tell, you need to have one install of Trac for each project. That’s great if you only have one project, or want to limit someone to viewing tasks or bugs for one project only. However, if you’re a developer working on multiple projects, it’s a pain needing to remember the different URLs of each Trac instances, not to mention the headache of maintaining several instances of something. Trac also isn’t the friendliest thing to install either.

Redmine

That led to Redmine. About a month ago I found Redmine. From my initial browsing around their site, and playing with the demo site, I was impressed. It’s incredibly similar to Trac, but it adds the ability to manage multiple projects. It’s wiki feature isn’t as full featured however. It also has a customizable workflow feature for tickets. (Trac will have this in the next release.) Redmine seemed like the way to go for me, so I installed it on my PowerMac at home, and got to work. Redmine requres Ruby on Rails, so installing it on Leopard was a piece of cake. (Installing it on the mediaTemple Grid Server was a nightmare however. 2-3 hours in, and I still couldn’t get it working. 30 minutes in Leopard, and I was done.)

Unfuddle

So, if I was happy with Redmine, why keep looking? I wasn’t. Redmine isn’t perfect, but I was happy enough to stick with it for a while. But a couple of weeks ago, a client of mediaRAIN was talking up a site called Unfuddle, and I was asked to check it out.

After creating a free account, I started playing around, and was hooked. Again, it’s not perfect, but Unfuddle had just about everything I was looking for in a bug tracker. Plus, they also provide Subversion (and Git) hosting, so I could finally have my bug tracking and SVN repos all in one place. I’ve previously had that stuff running on my local machine, but I’ve gotten to a point where I just don’t want to mess with managing servers and keeping stuff updated. I’ll gladly let someone else do it.

I’ve been using Unfuddle for a couple of weeks now, and have been really happy. Right now, I’ve only got one project going, so the free account is working just fine. Once I get started on another one, upgrading to the next plan up for $9/month isn’t going to be too much to spend at all.

I do have one minor complaint about Unfuddle however, and it’s about the different plans they offer. I don’t mind having different prices for different plans, but I really don’t like the fact that some features are price-locked. Many smaller teams (like myself) will want the time tracking feature, but can’t spend the $50 month to get the Corporate plan which allows it. Rather than lock out features, I would much rather prefer limiting the amount of disk space that users get based on price.

Regardless, I’m still very happy with Unfuddle, and the support staff has been great in responding to any questions I’ve had. (Usually within the hour.) If you’re looking for a great bug-tracking / SVN hosting solution, I’d definitely suggest you check them out.

This may sound like a paid ad for Unfuddle, but it’s not. I just really like it. Though… if they wanted to pay me, I wouldn’t complain.