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Vermis - new open source issue tracker in PHP

Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2010 7:25 am
by cepa
Hello,

I would like to introduce the project that I'm working on for a few months :)
Project is called Vermis (lat. bug, worm). It is an Open Source issue tracker
and project management tool for software developers and project managers that
has been created for improving quality of code, efficiency and speed of
development. Designed as a standard web application written in PHP, it can be
used on almost any platform and hosting service, including Windows, Linux and
more.

Project is available here http://vermis.diabloware.com
The online demo is here http://vermis.diabloware.com/demo

The long term goal is to compete with commercial products like Jira and other
open source software like Trac, Redmine, Mantis, Bugzilla etc.
Vermis is being distributed under terms of GNU General Public License, so you
can use it both in open and closed source projects.

Why Vermis exists?
- Jira has a lot of features but it is hard to use, and first of all it is a
commercial software
- Redmine needs RoR which is resource consuming
- Trac needs Python
- Bugzilla needs Perl
- Mantis, hmm i just didn't like it ;)

Why Vermis is better than the other products?
- Vermis is written in PHP and uses MySQL, which is probably the most
widespread and the cheapest web platform nowadays
- It doesn't require any additional software on a hosting server (except
mod_rewrite which is also very popular)
- Currently it has similar functionalities lika Jira
- It growns very fast :)

What Vermis already has?
- Multiple projects in one place
- Web access from any place on Earth
- Public and private projects
- Many types of issues
- Components
- Milestones
- Versioning and the history of changes
- Dynamic grids (issue navigator)
- Many user accounts
- Online registration
- Notes
- File upload
- Comments
- Progress bars
- Email notifications

What Vermis will have?
- API via SOAP or REST
- Graphical reporting
- Burndown charts
- Agile support (Scrum)
- Custom issue types, priorities, statuses, etc
- Dynamic access control list
- Automatic collecting reports from the external applications
- Wrappers for PHP, Java, C#
- many more ;)

I'm inviting to watch, test and use Vermis.
Since version 1.0 RC3 Vermis is its own bugtracker, which is available at http://bugs.diabloware.com
The latest source code you can download from http://vermis.diabloware.com/download
Any questions you can post at the official project's forum which is at http://forum.diabloware.com

I'm looking forward for any feedback, comments and critique :dubious:

Thanks,
Lukasz (cepa) Cepowski
DiabloWare :: Software from Hell!
www.diabloware.com | www.cepowski.pl
skype: lukasz.cepowski
cell: +48 502 670 711

Re: Vermis - new open source issue tracker in PHP

Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2010 7:22 pm
by alex.barylski
Nice you did a great job upon initial review. I'll download the code and review the code as well. If everything passes I will probably install the application tomorrow for a few projects at work.

Cheers,
Alex

Re: Vermis - new open source issue tracker in PHP

Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2010 12:21 am
by cepa
Hey, thanks for your reply, please let me know what you think about Vermis after using it, what should be improved and changed. Actually I'm planning the 1.0 version so I'd very appreciate for that kind of feedback.
Soon there will be an SVN link available so anyone can stay up to date.

And did you check the source code :>?

Re: Vermis - new open source issue tracker in PHP

Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2010 3:53 pm
by alex.barylski
Hey again. Very nice, you did a really good job. Very easy to follow code. :)

1. It would be nice if you had a PDF export option. Perhaps this is particular to my working habits but I tend to select several tasks and wish to print them on paper as a daily schedule. Check them off on paper as I work, submit the completed sheet to upper management to sign off (occassionally) and toss the paper. I would then manually close the tasks.

PDF is actually fancy just a simple txt file formatted for readability would suffice.

2. Sub-issues. FogBugz supports this. It also has a time accumulator feature so as I create tasks and sub-tasks and provide an estimate time they are automagically tallyed for me and shown in the parent tasks time estimate.

Cheers,
Alex

Re: Vermis - new open source issue tracker in PHP

Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2010 8:06 am
by cepa
Thanks, code quality is a pretty important thing for me ;)

BTW. The public SVN is available.
You can go to http://svn.diabloware.com
or checkout the latest code directly by typing:
svn co http://svn.diabloware.com/projects/vermis/trunk vermis

Re: Vermis - new open source issue tracker in PHP

Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2010 10:25 am
by alex.barylski
I managed to implement a exporter for simple raw TXT format which is more human friendly upon printing than a CSV.

It took me less than 40 mins to read through your code and implement the required files, copying the Csv exporter files, etc and renaming to Txt. Very simple to extend, which is a good indicataor to the quality of code.

My only issue now, is the title field is limited to 64 characters.

My work flow tends to use the title field as the initial description/basics of the issue. I would later use description to leave spefici notes, like design implications, previous attempts, improvement ideas, etc. But in the print out of the TXT format I simply need a basic list of what the issue is to serve as a reminder. Rarely do these tasks require any description.

Basically it would be nice to extend the title to say 255 characters. Probably very easily changing the config value in Doctrine somewhere?

Cheers,
Alex

Re: Vermis - new open source issue tracker in PHP

Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2010 2:57 am
by cepa
Wow, it's good to hear that it is that easy :D

Regarding to the 255 characters in a title field:
The problem is in mysql, actually it doesnt support a indexes longer than more or less 1000 bytes length per row.
It also requires some changes in the log table where titles are being serialized.
I'm sure that i cannot extend every title field on every model because that wasn't working, but im going to check what will happen when i change issues title field. As far as i remember titles in issues were not a parts of indexes so it should be possible to extend.

Join the project at the http://bugs.diabloware.com so you can track the progress on this issue (already added) 8)

Re: Vermis - new open source issue tracker in PHP

Posted: Mon Nov 08, 2010 4:42 pm
by cepa
Hello,

some time have past since the last release and some changes have been made.

Vermis, the new open source issue tracker written in PHP, based on Zend Framework and Doctrine ORM is heading towards stable version 1.0.

Today I would like to introduce the latest development version (r63-20101108) containing many bug fixes and some new features.

What is new in the project:

- Improved issues navigator, allows you to browse your issues in an easier way by breaking them by component, milestone, type, status and priority.

- SMTP integration, you don't need to setup a mail service on your machine, use any mail account and send notification emails via SMTP.

- IIS Support, even if you can't install Apache you can still enjoy using Vermis on your Windows box, finally Vermis is working under Microsoft IIS Web Server.

- Lightbox, show your image attachments in a popup box.

- Migration guard, you can safely upgrade Vermis to the latest version.

- Extended issue title length ;)

You can try out the online demo at http://vermis.diabloware.com

Feel free to test, download and use Vermis.
Please let me know if everything is working as it should, any kind of feedback is much appreciated :)

Home page: http://vermis.diabloware.com
Forum: http://forum.diabloware.com
Bugs: http://bugs.diabloware.com

Vermis 1.0 r130 Issue Tracker based on Zend and Doctrine

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 4:04 pm
by cepa
Hello,

I would like to annouce that the latest stable version of Vermis has just been released.
It is based on Zend Framework and some of You might find it useful :)

Vermis-1.0-r130-20110130

demo: http://vermis.ognisco.com/demo
home page: http://vermis.ognisco.com

Image

What is Vermis?
Vermis is an Open Source issue tracker and project management tool for software developers and project managers that has been created for improving quality of code, efficiency and speed of development. Designed as a standard web application written in PHP, it can be used on almost any platform and hosting service, including Windows, Linux and more.

vermis :: the issue tracking system

What's new:
- The 'web' directory has been removed
- No longer a need for a vhost
- Support for custom themes
- Support for i18n
- Localizations
- Many bugfixes

Feel free to download test and use Vermis, more on the project's home page.
Any feedback highly appreciated! :)

Thanks

Re: Vermis 1.0 r130 Issue Tracker based on Zend and Doctrine

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 9:02 pm
by Weirdan
Forum rules wrote: 14.3 You may not post press releases, regardless of forum. An open source business may post press releases in the General Discussion forum, and only that forum.
:arrow: moved to General Discussion
:arrow: merged into another vermis thread to satisfy '1 press release per project' rule

Re: Vermis - new open source issue tracker in PHP

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2011 6:16 pm
by Jonah Bron
Just thought I'd let you know that I started using Vermis on a Java project of mine, and I really like it. It really helps quantify achievements, and makes me tend toward smaller, more refactoring-ish commits.

The only issue I have with it so far is it would be nice to see a quicker way to change the status of a project, without having to click the project, then click edit. And is the little progressbar the only reason for the dependency on GD? If so, you should remove it and just use static images; that will help folks a lot who have to recompile PHP (not me though; all hail the package manager! ;) ).

Re: Vermis - new open source issue tracker in PHP

Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2011 3:51 am
by cepa
Hello,

the interface design will be changed soon, much more javascript and many usability improvements, also will do some key features like custom issue types, roles etc.

Progress bar is a pure html code, the GD lib is needed for captcha generation.

thx

Re: Vermis - new open source issue tracker in PHP

Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2011 10:02 am
by Jonah Bron
Ah, okay. Looking forward to the improvements. Why don't you use reCAPTCHA?

Re: Vermis - new open source issue tracker in PHP

Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 7:09 am
by cepa
Simply because this app has to work also in closed intranets, company networks etc :)

Re: Vermis - new open source issue tracker in PHP

Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 7:24 pm
by Jonah Bron
But wouldn't a captcha be unnecessary in a closed network?