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Recently I've been doing lots of weekend coding, and have began to really need a bugtracker as things are gaining speed. This is probably the worst case scenario because I basically have to let things cool down over the week,so I simply can't remember the bugs in my head. So far I've been using a text file to jot down bugs,but I'd rather use something a bit better.

The biggest points here are ease of use and very little setup time.Don't want to spend more than an hour learning the basics and trying to install something. Also in my case I'm on a Mac so that would help, but solutions for other platforms are welcomed as they will likely help others.

Robert Gould
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    You should really reconsider the accepted answer. Fogbugz and trac are so ridiculously simple to set up and start using (The hosted version of FB and a hosting company that already has trac configured for you) that it is insanity to use Excel. Use the best tools for the job. That means a real issue tracker - not google docs or excel. There's no excuse in my opinion. – Tim Aug 03 '09 at 15:23
  • try git-bug https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-bug it has Interactive UI! You don't need to remember any commend – user2959760 Apr 29 '20 at 11:31

22 Answers22

46

FogBugz has a student/startup edition that's free indefinitely, for 2 or less users.

MattBelanger
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  • maybe he should buy JIRA? He will also not use it in the future. – IAdapter Nov 03 '08 at 12:50
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    Free edition is at: http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/StudentAndStartup.html. I'd have signed up many months ago had I known ... – Jon Cram Feb 19 '09 at 14:55
  • Been using free FogBugz for my home project for a while now. Its fast, easy to use and has enough features for small developers. Oh, and there's no set up - its hosted on teh internets. – Justicle Oct 02 '09 at 06:08
28

Personally, I use Excel. (Wait, come back, I'm not crazy!) For a bigger / team project, I've gotten a ton of mileage out of Bugzilla, but that tends to be kind of overkill for a one-person project.

But, a well-organized spreadsheet, with columns for things like "status", "description", "code module", "resolved date," etc, gets you pretty close to what you'd need for a small project. Sorting a spreadsheet by column isn't anywhere near a search, but its a whole lot better than "find in text file."

Heck, if you use Google docs rather than excel, you can even publish the thing as an RSS feed and get it anywhere.

And, the major advantage is that the setup time and learning curve are both effectively nil.

Addendum: And of course, the instant your "One-Person Bug Tracker" becomes a "Two-Person Bug Tracker" you must switch to something better. Bugzilla, FogBugz, anything. Trust me, I've been there.

Electrons_Ahoy
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    An excel spreadsheet that you use is much better than a complex bugtracker that you don't. It doesn't scale to many users of course. Joel had an article on how excel got really good at pivot tabels after the developers started using it for project planning. – Martin Beckett Oct 31 '08 at 18:09
  • Very true. I'm always impressed at how decent my excel lashups actually are. – Electrons_Ahoy Oct 31 '08 at 19:11
  • The google dogs solution is really nice actually. Since I don't have excel on all my machines, and for the RSS too. – Robert Gould Feb 02 '09 at 15:03
  • Right on! Glad that's working out for you. I've become a big fan, personally. – Electrons_Ahoy Feb 02 '09 at 17:22
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    "The google dogs solution is really nice actually". A wonderful typo (or so I assume). I'm going to have trouble concentrating on work whilst I wonder what service Google Dogs provide. – Jon Cram Feb 19 '09 at 14:27
  • I'm not sure either, but I bet you can search the hell out of it. – Electrons_Ahoy Feb 19 '09 at 19:49
  • + for google docs, that's my first solution attempt for nearly anything these days. – Bill K Mar 11 '09 at 21:57
  • Excel USED to be a decent solution - in fact I used it years ago as a one-man shop as well. However, now given the ease of use and free internet-based solutions Excel makes absolutely no sense any more. Trac and Fogbugz (free hosted version ) provide so much more and productive functionality that you'd have to be crazy to stiuck with excel. – Tim Aug 03 '09 at 15:20
  • It isn't quite as easy to attach screenshots and files that relate to an issue in Excel as it is with a full bug tracker - that's the biggest turn off for Excel in my opinion. – garethm Oct 02 '09 at 05:49
11

Trac or Redmine are both pretty good. I don't know how easy they are to set up on a Mac.

Roger Lipscombe
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    Trac is great.. but I found it very awkward to install on Windows – Tigraine Oct 31 '08 at 18:39
  • @Tigraine: I've had that same issue a couple of years ago, but since then the situation apparently has improved, though. – Jasper Bekkers Nov 01 '08 at 18:17
  • I (until recently) had Trac installed on Windows. It was relatively painless. – Roger Lipscombe Nov 01 '08 at 18:25
  • I've been trying to install Trac on a Windows Server 2003 box for the last hour - it's a real pain. The official Trac website doesn't provide much useful or friendly information. I'm looking for something else, either gonna go with BugTracker.Net or Fogbugz. – Saajid Ismail Aug 03 '09 at 09:40
  • @toXicwaZte: fair enough. I haven't tried recently. I remember that the Trac wiki was better-organised when I last tried. That was on a Windows 2003 box, but I already had Apache and various bits installed, because I was using SVN on that box. – Roger Lipscombe Aug 03 '09 at 10:31
10

It's worth mentioning that FogBugz also has a free version for up to 2 users, which would suit you. It is hosted so there is no installation and you can use something like Fluid to access it in its own window.

davidmytton
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7

I don't think you need a full blown bugtracker for your scenario.

Try tiddly wiki, store each bug in a tiddler and give them tags like 'open' or 'closed'.

There is no installation required (only one html file), and it's very easy to use. And platform neutral.

Daniel Kreiseder
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If you're working on a LAMPP stack, then for ease of setup and use I would probably recommend Mantis. It's written in PHP / MySQL and the only installation involved was specifying where the database should be created and what credentials should be used.

Oh, and its FOSS.

Noah Goodrich
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let me put in a good word for ditz - it's a bit bare-bones, but it has the invaluable feature that bugs are checked into your repository. it's also very easy to use once you get used to its way of doing things

Martin DeMello
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I would suggest Omnigroup's Omnifocus - it's an excellent task tracker, and if you just make the mental leap from bug to task, I think it works famously for one man projects as well as being an excellent way to organize your no doubt burgeoning task queue.

feoh
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Eclipse has a really interesting system--I don't know why so few people seem to know about it.

It's tied in with their to-do list. It gives you the ability to enter bugs with as much or as little info as you like. You can tie it to versioning or an external bug tracker if you like. It's a decent bug tracker in itself.

The real trick is how it works with your source code.

Before you begin work you select a bug from the list. All the time you're coding, it tracks what files you are editing. It can close old tabs for you, and will also highlight areas of the source tree that you have modified a lot.

The nice thing is, you can go back to any bug you've edited an you will get your "Environment" back. Not only all your notes and stuff, but the same tabs will open up and the same sections of code in the navigator will be highlighted.

Also eclipse works with virtually any language, it's not just restricted to Java...

Bill K
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You can use fogbugz for free if you're a one man team. It's super easy to use and quick to learn.

They made it so that bugs are really easy to enter, no mandatory fields.

carrier
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2

I'm the author of BugTracker.NET mentioned in another post. If I were looking for a tracker for JUST ONE PERSON with MINIMUM hassle, I'd use FogBugz, because it's hosted. No installation, no need to worry about backups.

But, what are you doing about version control? Don't you have to worry about that too, and backing that up? If so, consider something like Unfuddle or CVSDude where you can get BOTH Subversion and Trac, or Subversion and Fogbugz.

Corey Trager
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I use Mantis at home and I'm happy with it. It can be a pain in the arse to get it working so you can choose to download a free and ready-made VM installation. Cannot be easier than that,

Trap
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Maybe a spreadsheet would be the next logical step? I know it sounds really un-sexy, but if you're the only user, you don't have to worry much about others mucking it up, and it adds a few basic features over a text file like sorting. Then if you later need to graduate to something RDBMS-backed, you would likely have a feasible import path. I just know that for me, when working by myself, I don't tend to get around to putting bugs in anything that requires more care and feeding than that (of course when working with others the collaborative needs make a more defined repository a requirement, but that's a different story).

EDIT: After noting the availability of free, hosted access to FogBugz, I'm re-thinking the bar for care and feeding...

Rex Miller
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RT from BestPractical is great.

I also get a lot of mileage out of just keeping a list of items in a text file with vi, if I can express them all in one line. This is usually for many small todo items on a single component or task.

skiphoppy
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I've tried bugtracker.net and even though it's a little bit rough on the edges, it's free and was built with ASP.NET:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=66812

Luis Abreu
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I dig ELOG in those cases, it's more of a personal blog, but it's easy to handle and install, the data is local on your computer and you can search all entries via fulltext. Always sufficed for me.

PhiLho
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Kai
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Are you using a source control repository as well? If not, you really should, even though you're only a one-man team.

My personal preference is to use a VMWare Virutal Application (free) that offers no-hassle setup gives you access to both Trac and Subversion. You can find many different virual appliances through searching. Here is one example of getting a Trac/SVN virtual appliance up and running:

http://www.rungeek.com/blog/archives/how-to-setup-svn-and-trac-with-a-virtual-appliance/

Trac is an excellent project management tool that sports a bug tracker, wiki, and integrated source control management. It's adaptable to your needs, and fits me very well personally.

darronschall
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I use bugzilla for this purpose. Plus for me was that it has integration with Eclipse (precisely with Mylyn). FogBuzz has it to but AFAIK it is nonfree.

Plus it sits on my laptop so I can code and add/remove bugs when offline (it was biggest disadvantage of hosted solutions for me)

Installation was not a problem in Ubuntu (and any debian-based distro I suppose).

jb.
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If you have a Windows box with IIS and MSSQL (including SQL Server Express), you should look at Bugtracker.net. It is free and open source (you get the source code), and it is extensible.

Even if you are a one man shop, having a free bug tracking system with this much power will allow you to grow over time, because it is fairly easy to add future users into the system.

You can also customize it for the look of your organization, business or product.

pearcewg
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Ontime 2008 by Axosoft is free for a single user licence. It's industrial strength and will give you alot more that just bug tracking!

http://www.axosoft.com

user32378
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Jira which now has free personal licenses.

Joel Lucsy
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I am using leo for this purpose. To be more specific, its cleo plugin.

Of course you might need to spend some time to get used to leo, but it will pay off.

A flat text file is just a list, an Excel spreadsheet is a two-dimensional list.

leo lets you keep the data in a tree! And it also has clones.

Anonymous
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