What are the benefits of Source Code Integration for a Bug Tracking system?

Question

I'm choosing a Bug/Issue Tracking system for use on our project. This question and this question are helpful in giving systems to evaluate. However, I have a question raised by looking in to the various products on offer.

Some systems promote Source Code Control System integration as a feature. This is not something I've used before and looking at the various tools' websites I can't find any detail on precisely what this integration provides. Is it any more than browsing my repository through the same web interface I use for raising bugs?

So what benefits does such integration offer? How will it save me time or make our product better?

Answer 1

Jira together with FishEye (a SCM browser) can, when if you commit a changeset with a log messages containing a Jira issue key, such as "PROJ-123", insert a link into the corresponding Jira issue, and Jira will display a link in PROJ-123 to the changeset mentioning that issue.

Jira can also integrate with Hudson, so that when a build incorporating a fix (i.e. changeset) is performed, the Jira issue mentioned in the log message of that commit will get a comment about the status of the build.

Since an issue tracker is used to keep track of issues with the source code, there are a boatload of features one might imagine in an integrate issue/source-control management system.