An apparently mundane task with significant impact on
An apparently mundane task with significant impact on
maintenance cost
An apparently mundane task with significant impact on
maintenance cost
customer satisfaction
An apparently mundane task with significant impact on
maintenance cost
customer satisfaction
project personnel management
Roles in an Issue Tracking System
Users (internal or external to the project team) report problems
Project administrators prioritize problems and assign some to project staff
Project staff report on status of problem solution
What Questions Does an Issue Tracking System Answer??
What problems are currently open?
Which of those are the most severe?
Have similar problems been reported in the past?
What is tracked?
Which release(s) does the problem occur in?
What are the environmental factors?
Problem history
Expected behavior
Observed behavior
Open Alternatives
Bugzilla was one the earliest well-known such systems
Commonly integrated into Forges to take advantage of infrastructure already provided for project management
Bugzilla Problem Report
Bugzilla Classifies Problems by
Severity
Priority
Bugzilla also Tracks
Comments (forum-style)
Notifications desired
The Life-Cycle of a Problem
What Goes into the System?
Problems can be reported by end-users or team members
Team members will generally not enter simple test failures
Team members may use to track ideas and feature requests
Forges
Most forge systems integrate some form of issue tracking
Already provide personnel management
E.g., FusionForge provides separate tracking of bug reports and feature requests
Compare to our own Gitlab
Other Possibilities
Search capabilities vary widely
Some systems link problem reports to regression tests
More general project task managers exist
Personal & shared task manager for Eclipse
Mylyn supports two kinds of tasks
Mylyn distinguishes between due dates and schedule dates
MyLyn and Project Perspectives
personal task list, including Bugzilla reports
Change set related to task
Task editor
Context-based task info
Working with an Issue-Tracking System
Define one or more queries indicting what issue reports you want to be displayed by mylyn
Select a task to update info (will synchronize with remote manager)
Task List
Can display by category/query or by date
Color changes indicate scheduling & status
Context Management
The context of a task is the collection of files & information related to the task.
When you activate a task, Eclipse/Mylyn tracks the context
The Focus on Active Task button causes the package explorer to show only elements in the active task’s context
Establishing Context
From the task list, activate a task.
Start working
As you open files directly from the package manager, or indirectly (e.g., using Show Declaration (F3), Open Type (Ctrl-Shift-T), or Show References (Ctrl-Shift-G), they are added to the focused package manager view.
Restoring Context
You can deactivate the currently active task (or activate a different task that you want to switch to).
You “return” to a task by re-activating it.
Contexts and Tests
Contexts and Change Sets
Changes made while working on an activated tasks are checked
Machine Hopping
A major limitation (IMO) of the Mylyn context support is its limitation to a single workspace
Things I have yet to try