Miroslav's Code Mind

I'm using Subversion for a few months now (along with TortoiseSVN and AnkhSVN), and I'm very happy with it. I think it's a very good product with excellent features. It has improved my development process a lot, and I feel much safer having all my code in the repository.

But, this post is not about Subversion. After successfully using Subversion, I've decided that it'll be good to have some kind of bug tracker / wiki to improve the internal communication inside the team I work with. Actually, I've decided that after reading Ayende's posts, and having few dozen mails a day between my team members (we are all scattered around the globe).

Yesterday, I've tried to follow Ayende's steps, and install Trac. After few hours of trying different versions of Trac and required components, I've finally managed to install it. I didn't configure it to integrate with Subversion yet ... Must leave it for a few days, to cool my head down a little :)

Many people are avoiding Open Source software because of different reasons. One of the reasons is that many of OSS products are so damn hard to install and configure. I consider my self to be a power user, but this kind of staff really freaks me out. I don't want to spend two or three days just to install and configure some software, yet alone to use it. I don't have that much time to spend on something I'm not quite sure I'll even use.

The number of users for a software product is a very important. The more, the better. Especially for the Open Source software. More users = more bugs reported = better software. At least in my book. This is one thing where most of OSS products lack. They don't try to ease up for the user. It's not that hard to create an installation procedure. It needs to be Open Source ... Sure. Use NSIS. Yeah, I know what some of you are thinking now ... "Make it yourself if you need it. It's Open Source, after all." :)

I'll try Trac eventually and post my opinions here. Until then, good luck with it ...