[git.ikiwiki.info.git] / doc / tips / issue_tracking.mdwn

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Wikis are not just for encyclopedias and websites anymore. The
[Ikiwiki](http://ikiwiki.info) engine can be used to handle issue tracking,
news feeds, and other needs of a software project. The wiki can become as
much a part of your software project as its code, with interesting results.

Ikiwiki is a wiki engine with a twist. It's best described by the term
"wiki compiler". Just as a typical software project consists of source code
that is stored in revision control and compiled with `make` and `gcc`, an
ikiwiki based wiki is stored as human editable source in a revision control
system, and built into HTML using ikiwiki.

Ikiwiki is a full-featured wiki that can be used for a variety of purposes,
from traditional wikis to weblogs, podcasting, or even aggregating together
other RSS feeds into a Planet. While ikiwiki is being used for purposes
ranging from genealogy research to shoe accessory sales, one thing it's
especially well suited for is collaborative software development, including
issue tracking, announcements, documentation, and managing a software
project's web site.

## Building wikis with ikiwiki

The simplest way to use ikiwiki is to build static html files from source
wiki files. This example builds a wiki for an imaginary software project.
The wiki source files used in this example are available in the
`examples/softwaresite` subdirectory of ikiwiki's documentation.

        wiki$ ls
        Makefile  bugs.mdwn     doc/      download.mdwn  news/
        bugs/     contact.mdwn  doc.mdwn  index.mdwn     news.mdwn
        wiki$ make
        ikiwiki `pwd` html --wikiname FooBar --plugin=goodstuff \
                --exclude=html --exclude=Makefile
        wiki$ w3m -dump html/doc/faq.html
        FooBar/ doc/ faq
        
        FooBar frequently asked questions.

        1. Is this a real program?
        2. Really?

        _Is this a real program?_

        No, it's just an example.

        _Really?_

        Yes, really.

        Links: contact doc
        Last edited Wed Nov 22 09:58:35 2006

If all you need is a simple static set of pages, that can be put up on a
web site, or shipped with a software package, this is a good starting
point, which includes example pages for a news feed for the project (with
RSS), an issue tracker, and other pages users expect to see on a project's
website. The wiki's source code can be checked into revision control as part
of the software project, and tied into its build system using the Makefile.

Ikiwiki can also be tied into the `post-commit` hook of your revision
control system, so that whenever a developer commits a change to a wiki
page in revision control, the project's web site is automatically updated.
Ikiwiki has a [tutorial](http://ikiwiki.info/setup.html) that explains in
detail how to set this up using the Subversion, Git, TLA, and Mercurial
revision control systems.

The tutorial also explains how to configure ikiwiki so that users can edit
pages using a web interface, with their changes committed back into revision
control. After all one of the benefits of keeping a project's docs in a wiki
is to make it easy for users to improve them, so that busy software developers
don't have to. And if the wiki is being used for issue tracking, this will
let users post and follow up on bug reports.

## Using a wiki for issue tracking?

You might be wondering exactly how a wiki can be used as an issue tracking
system. Three key parts of ikiwiki come together to create an issue tracker:
pages, tags, and inlining.

Each issue is described on a separate page in the wiki. There can also be
an associated Discussion page, as well as other related subpages that can
be used to hold files used to reproduce the bug, or patches, or other
related files. Since each issue is a page, standard wiki links can be used
to link related issues, or link issues with other pages in the wiki, and
each issue has its own unique URL. Since ikiwiki supports subdirectories,
it's usual to keep all the bugs in a `bugs/` subdirectory. You might prefer
to separate bugs and todo items, with todo items in their own 'todo/'
subdirectory.

While directories are useful for broad hierarchical grouping, tags can be
used to categorize issues, as bugs, wishlist items, security issues,
patches, or whatever other categories are useful. Bugs can be tagged
"moreinfo", "done" or "unreproducible", or "moreinfo", etc, to document
different stages of their lifecycle. Developers can take ownership of a bug
by tagging it with something like "owner/Joey".

To tag a wiki page, edit it and add text such as "\[[tag done]]". Note that
adding a wiki link to "\[[done]]" will have the same categorisation effect
as a tag, but the link will show up in the body of the page, which is a
nice effect if used in a sentence such as "This was \[[done]] in version
1.1.". Another way to close a bug is to move it out of the `bugs/`
subdirectory, though this would prevent it from showing up in a list of
closed bugs.

Inlining is how ikiwiki pulls individual issue pages together into
something larger, be it a page listing recently opened bugs (with a form to
let a user easily post a new bug), or a page listing recently closed bugs,
or an index of all bugs, or all wishlist items, or RSS feeds for any of
these. A flexible syntax is used for specifying what kind of pages should
be inlined into a given page. A few examples:

* A typical list of all open bugs, with their full text, and a form to post new
  bugs.

        \[[inline pages="bugs/* and !link(done) and !*/Discussion" actions=yes postform=yes show=0]]

* Index of the 30 most recently fixed bugs.

        \[[inline pages="bugs/* and link(done) and !*/Discussion" sort=mtime show=30 archive=yes]]

* Index of the 10 most recently active bugs.

        \[[inline pages="bugs/* and !link(done) and !*/Discussion" sort=mtime show=10]]

* Open security issues.

        \[[inline pages="bugs/* and link(security) and !link(done) and !*/Discussion"]]

* Full text of bugs assigned to Joey.

        \[[inline pages="bugs/* and link(owner/Joey) and !link(done) and !*/Discussion" show=0]]

It may seem strange to consider using a wiki for issue tracking when there
are several dedicated bug tracking systems, like Bugzilla, that handle all
aspects of it already. The weakest part of using ikiwiki for issue
tracking, and certainly the place where a dedicated bug tracker like
Bugzilla shines in comparison, is storing and querying structured data
about bugs. Ikiwiki has little structured data except for page filenames
and tags, so if you need lots of queryable data such as what versions a bug
affects and what version it was fixed in, ikiwiki may not be a good fit for
your issue tracking. 

On the other hand, by using a wiki for issue tracking, there is one less
system for users and developers to learn, and all the flexibility of a wiki
to take advantage of. Ikiwiki even supports OpenID, so it's easy for users
to use it for filing bugs, without going through an annoying registration
process.

## Benefits

Realistically, there are plusses and minuses to letting users edit a
software project's documentation in a wiki. Like any wiki, to be
successful, some review is needed of the changes users make. In some cases
it will be easiest to limit the pages that users are allowed to edit.
Still, keeping the wiki open for user edits will probably turn up some
passionate users who prove very useful at filling in holes in the
documentation and cleaning up the site.

Programmers are supposed to be bad at writing documentation, and putting a
project's docs into a wiki might not solve that. But it can make it a
little bit easier. Consider a programmer who's just coded up a new feature.
He can commit that to a development branch in revision control, and then go
update the docs on the web site to document it. But the feature isn't
available in a released version yet, so it's probably easier to skip
updating the website. Maybe once it's released, the web site will be
updated to mention the feature, but maybe (probably) not.

Now consider what happens if instead the web site is a wiki, that has its
source included in the project's revision control system. The programmer
codes up the feature, and can easily update the docs in the wiki to match.
When he commits his changes to a development branch, the docs are committed
too. Later, when that change is merged to the release branch, the doc
changes are also merged, and automatically go live on the web site.
Updating the documentation to reflect each change made and publishing it on
the website has become a standard part of the programmer's workflow.

But this still requires programmers to write documentation, so maybe it
still won't work. Let's go back a step. Before the programmer wrote that
feature, he probably got some requests for it, and maybe he developed those
into a specification for how the feature should work. Since ikiwiki can be
used as an issue tracker, the requests were made using it, and were
collaboratively edited on the wiki, to develop the specification. Once the
feature is implemented, that issue can be closed. What better way to close
it than to move it out of the issue tracking system, and into the project's
documentation?

        svn mv wiki/bugs/new_feature.mdwn wiki/doc/

If the spec is written well enough to be useful for end user documentation,
the programmer doesn't have to write a lot of docs after all; that was done
when the feature was designed. By using ikiwiki for issue tracking, plus
editing the spec, plus documentation, plus the website, each of these steps
has built on the other and the programmer has had to do less busywork.

A different example of how ikiwiki can tie things together is how a
security hole might be handled. First it's discovered, and a bug filed
about it. When it's fixed, the commit that fixes the bug can include a
change to the bug's page, marking it as done. Since it's a security hole,
an announcement needs to be made right away so users will know they need to
upgrade. This announcement can be added to the wiki's news feed, and
committed along with the fix, and the announcement can use a regular wiki
link to link to the bug that describes the security hole in detail. If the
security hole also affects an older version of the software, the fix, along
with the wiki documentation for that fix, can be merged into the branch for
the older version.

Another benefit of keeping the bug tracking system in revision control with
the wiki is that it allows for disconnected development. So there's no need
to be online to review the project's bug list, and there's no need to
remember to close fixed bugs once you're back online.

For fans of distributed revision control, ikiwiki opens even more
possibilities. With a project's website and issue tracker kept in
distributed revision control with the project, these become distributed as
well, rather than centralized appendixes to the project. Developers can
pass around changesets that not only fix bugs, but mark them as done. If
large changes are being made in someone's branch, they can choose to put up
their own version of the website, use it to track bugs for that branch, and
when the branch is ready, all these changes can be merged back into the
mainline of the project.