What I like about Redmine
- Transfer
In a recent article about a project management tool was asked a question about the differences Trac and Redmine. Below is a translation of a rather subjective but well-reasoned article on the differences between these systems.
What i love about Redmine
As I mentioned earlier, we moved from Trac to Redmine to manage projects (tracking bug reports and tickets, project stages, managing source code). In this article I will tell you what I like about Redmine and compare it with our previous installation of Trac.
As I understand from the Trac mailing list and discussions in some comments on tickets (authorship of the main developers), the main goal of Trac is to create a stable and simple system or platform that could be expanded with plugins. This is a great goal ... But (and there are many of these “buts”) if you manage several Trac installations, this vision quickly turns against you. Below are some basic things I miss in Trac.
The initial reason for switching to Redmine was the lack of support for several projects in Trac. I know that you can modify Trac (see trac-hacks.org ) to include support for several projects, but I do not like such changes. There were several discussions about how Trac should support several projects and whether it should do it at all, but the fact remains that there is no solution to this problem out of the box. I read something about Trac 2.0 that implements this, I think we will see it in the year 2015 ...
Redmine has support for several projects. The integration throughout the system is great. You can create nested subprojects and move error reports and tickets from one project to another. For each project, you can assign different users and enable or disable certain functionality (work plan, time tracking, source code management, etc.).
I have to agree that the ticket system in Trac is very powerful and flexible. Without a doubt, Trac is one of the most common and stable tools for project management and bug tracking for a very good reason. You can easily search and filter tickets by importance, component, version or owner, and then save the filters. It is perfectly.
What I really missed when using Trac was the ability to batch edit (change / close / move) multiple tickets at once. It is in this case that Redmine's AJAX-based batch editing comes in handy.
User management at Redmine is great! In addition to simple management, custom roles are supported. You can set various user roles in various projects.
Trac does not support out of the box user management. Unlike error tracking systems, which usually have a table for storing users, Trac has adopted an approach that allows users to use the numerous authorization modules available for their web server. This means that system administrators can redirect Trac requests to something like LDAP, Active Directory, or any other centralized user management system that they already have deployed.
So which is better? Complex issue. I am a big supporter of out-of-the-box software. Not too much configuration, easy installation. This does not mean that software should be “simple”: flexibility and ease of configuration can go hand in hand. However, I believe that Redmine has the best approach to good user management right after installation. If you need something more centralized, LDAP is also supported.
I am sure Trac is more stable than Redmine. So if you need a stable product, use Trac. But since we are a small web design company, the stability of the work environment is not really critical for us.
What I'm looking for in the field of project management software is new approaches and ideas to improve our teamwork. I keep in view the history of activity on the Redmine project to see how other people use this platform. Some of their remarks and comments inspire us to change the way we work, or to use the functionality that we did not pay due attention to before.
Of course, there are some things that Trac does a lot better. First of all, Trac has a large community with many core developers; Redmine is built around one or more people. In addition, the Trac version control system repository browser is much more powerful and intuitive.
I used Trac for a long time, and I really respect all the guys who work on this rock-solid project. But, as I said earlier, Trac's strengths are also its weaknesses. In an attempt to keep the system as lightweight as possible, discussions about possible functions usually end with the decision “Not in the kernel”.
UPD Thanks for the karma, transferred to Project Management.
What i love about Redmine
As I mentioned earlier, we moved from Trac to Redmine to manage projects (tracking bug reports and tickets, project stages, managing source code). In this article I will tell you what I like about Redmine and compare it with our previous installation of Trac.
As I understand from the Trac mailing list and discussions in some comments on tickets (authorship of the main developers), the main goal of Trac is to create a stable and simple system or platform that could be expanded with plugins. This is a great goal ... But (and there are many of these “buts”) if you manage several Trac installations, this vision quickly turns against you. Below are some basic things I miss in Trac.
Numerous projects
The initial reason for switching to Redmine was the lack of support for several projects in Trac. I know that you can modify Trac (see trac-hacks.org ) to include support for several projects, but I do not like such changes. There were several discussions about how Trac should support several projects and whether it should do it at all, but the fact remains that there is no solution to this problem out of the box. I read something about Trac 2.0 that implements this, I think we will see it in the year 2015 ...
Redmine has support for several projects. The integration throughout the system is great. You can create nested subprojects and move error reports and tickets from one project to another. For each project, you can assign different users and enable or disable certain functionality (work plan, time tracking, source code management, etc.).
Batch editing of tickets and bug reports
I have to agree that the ticket system in Trac is very powerful and flexible. Without a doubt, Trac is one of the most common and stable tools for project management and bug tracking for a very good reason. You can easily search and filter tickets by importance, component, version or owner, and then save the filters. It is perfectly.
What I really missed when using Trac was the ability to batch edit (change / close / move) multiple tickets at once. It is in this case that Redmine's AJAX-based batch editing comes in handy.
User and role management
User management at Redmine is great! In addition to simple management, custom roles are supported. You can set various user roles in various projects.
Trac does not support out of the box user management. Unlike error tracking systems, which usually have a table for storing users, Trac has adopted an approach that allows users to use the numerous authorization modules available for their web server. This means that system administrators can redirect Trac requests to something like LDAP, Active Directory, or any other centralized user management system that they already have deployed.
So which is better? Complex issue. I am a big supporter of out-of-the-box software. Not too much configuration, easy installation. This does not mean that software should be “simple”: flexibility and ease of configuration can go hand in hand. However, I believe that Redmine has the best approach to good user management right after installation. If you need something more centralized, LDAP is also supported.
A large number of updates / new functionality
I am sure Trac is more stable than Redmine. So if you need a stable product, use Trac. But since we are a small web design company, the stability of the work environment is not really critical for us.
What I'm looking for in the field of project management software is new approaches and ideas to improve our teamwork. I keep in view the history of activity on the Redmine project to see how other people use this platform. Some of their remarks and comments inspire us to change the way we work, or to use the functionality that we did not pay due attention to before.
Anything else?
Of course, there are some things that Trac does a lot better. First of all, Trac has a large community with many core developers; Redmine is built around one or more people. In addition, the Trac version control system repository browser is much more powerful and intuitive.
I used Trac for a long time, and I really respect all the guys who work on this rock-solid project. But, as I said earlier, Trac's strengths are also its weaknesses. In an attempt to keep the system as lightweight as possible, discussions about possible functions usually end with the decision “Not in the kernel”.
UPD Thanks for the karma, transferred to Project Management.