How important is a bug tracking tool for a lone developer, and which one along with a VCS should I look at? [closed]

Question

This might be a stupid question, but if I'm a lone developer and only ever going to be working off of my development laptop, how important is using bug tracking software? I am currently debating between using Subversion or SourceGear Vault as my VCS of choice, and SourceGear has an integrated bug tracker (Fortress) while the Subversion world tends to use something like Trac.

Now, I am going to use my laptop for both home and work projects (I have an MSDN subscription for myself, and seeing as work is too cheap to buy me anything I'm going to write their software on my laptop to use it; we have this specified in my contract that I own all the code I write as though I was a consultant, although I'm an FTE), and at work I'm going to set up Subversion since it's free and there's no budget (so I guess that means I should be using SVN at home too). A bug tracker might be beneficial at work to keep track of things once the software is done, but what about for personal use?

Remember, my laptop is only going to be for development, so I'm afraid if I put SVN on it (gotta keep that repo separate from work's, after all) and then Trac or something else, I'm going to be turning it into a mini-server, or is that a good thing? And I haven't even looked into a CI solution yet, but honestly I do not see the point of CI if you're only going to be using a single machine. That might change for the future, but for right now all my work is going to be done on this one laptop.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

A VCS is important whether you're working alone or not.

Really, it should be there for those moments when you realize you've made a mistake and want to rollback to what you had yesterday or this morning, or maybe you've just made a different decision in the implementation and want to branch so you can test things out without effecting the core of what you've written so far.

All in all, it is a nice thing to have. And you're better off being safe than sorry.

As far as the bug tracker, that is more your personal preference. I like Redmine, which integrates with SVN, git, etc. Others prefer Trac. But either way they will be able to run on your laptop while taking a minimal amount of resources. Especially when you consider that you're the only one using them.

I would check out http://bitnami.org/ they offer packaged Bug Trackers that you just execute and it will start its own little server on the port of your choice, and you can stop it when you're not using it.

Answer 2

You might want to consider an online repository and/or tracker/planner in addition to your local one. It's another stage of risk management and if, in the future, someone else joins your team, you can scale up just by granting them access.

Some options:

Source Control (Online):

• Assembla - Public source is free, private repositories are paid
• Source Forge - Open source only
• Google Code - Open source only
• Git Hub - Public source is free, private repositories are paid
• Bit Bucket - Unlimited private repos with up to 5 contributors, or 8 if you invite friends

Bug Tracking/Project Management

• LightHouse - Unlimited open source, paid private projects
• FogBugz - Full version is free for up to two developers
• BaseCamp - Paid only
• Trac - Not hosted (although Assembla hosts it), open source - Python
• Bugzilla - Not hosted, open source - Perl
• Mantis - Not hosted, open source - PHP

Answer 3

I think you should go with FogBugz. It's online, free for 2 developers, it integrates with your source control. I think bugtracking is second to source control in terms of project management especially for a single developer. You need to be able to tell when you've fixed all the reported bugs so you can predict a ship date on a feature etc etc..

An automated build process will take a huge burden off of you to be able to create your software on demand (in case of deletions etc). A CI process may be a little overkill but automated builds rule.

If you're worried about putting it on your laptop but still want to roll your own you can go to slicehost and get an ubuntu box for a subversion/trac solution online for 20 bucks a month. I do this for some of my personal projects...