Sun’s Bug Parade hasn’t changed in years. Just as Sun has moved away from Subversion to Mercurial for the JDK, it should be noted that Sun is not considering moving the BugParade to the existing customized Bugzilla that is a part of the java.net offering.
Read more, discussion from the openjdk mailing lists and a recommendation…
From the Mailing Lists…
From discuss@openjdk.java.net, David Herron of Sun writes:
This is under discussion how to proceed. The discussion is happening
across all of Sun’s open source projects because we all have similar
complications. As I understand it the solution is going to serve all
Sun’s open source projects.
David also comments on the shortcomings of Bugzilla.
Phil Race (also from Sun) responds:
In top of that we have dozens of ‘boundary’ systems - which tap into our existing bug database to produce custom reports, provide bulk update mechanisms etc etc. When we transitioned to a new bug database system a couple of years ago, even though we had input into its design it was a very painful and expensive process. The system was in design for literally years and some of it is still having the kinks worked out. I find it really hard to believe we could simply move to bugzilla and not have huge consequences.
If you have comments or opinions that you think Sun needs to know, Sign Up for the General OpenJDK Discussion Mailing List.
Follow the Leader: Use Jira
Real open source communities are already using JIRA with success. (My Opinion) Use an Atlassian stack. Jira. I know it isn’t “free”, but Jira + Confluence + Bamboo has suited a lot of projects very well lately. Just go take a look at the JRuby project - which is using both JIRA and Bamboo.
JIRA answers Phil’s concern that there are a number of external systems that have been written to integrate with the existing BugParade system. If you are looking for easy integration, JIRA provides an XML-RPC interface and there is a Ruby Client, JIRA4R which can be used to provide integration with external scripts and systems.
Take a look at how atlassian provides *free* licenses for opensource projects.
http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/licensing-faq.jsp#open-source
B.T.W. - I am in no way affiliated with atlassian or JIRA. I'm a heavy user of their software for opensource projects and think they kick serious ass.
@Ryan, I should have qualified "free". I remember (long ago) when people were just starting to propose using JIRA for bug tracking at the ASF there were a number of people who were against it because it wasn't "free" as in "freedom".
I've been won over by the tool itself, but that isn't to say that I wouldn't be excited if there was an open source tool that could compete. I just don't see it happening because as you have already mentioned "they kick serious ass".