Despite the progress we have made in developing software, bug-free applications are still just a beautiful dream. That’s why managing bugs and tracking issues remain a crucial part of the software development process. And since you are likely to spend a considerable amount of time dealing with software issues and bugs, a decent issue-tracking program can make your coding work less stressful and more efficient. And this is where The Bug Genie application can come in rather handy.
This easy-to-deploy issue-tracking solution offers all the features you’d expect from a professional bug-tracking package wrapped into a user-friendly interface. Tracking issues is only part of the deal, though. If you want users to submit bugs and provide feedback, you have to make the entire submission process as simple and easy as possible. And The Bug Genie makes it supremely easy to submit bug reports even for uninitiated users. In short, if you are looking for a robust and user-friendly bug-tracking application, The Bug Genie is exactly what you need…
Resources:
A machine running the Apache/PHP/MySQL stack, or the XAMPP package
The latest release of The Bug Genie
01 Preparations
To install The Bug Genie, you need either a server with the Apache/PHP/MySQL stack, or the XAMPP solution that bundles all the required components in one neat package. For this tutorial, we use the latter, so download the latest version of XAMPP and install it on your machine.
02 Download and install The Bug Genie
Next, point your browser to the project’s website and grab the latest version of the software. Unpack the downloaded archive and move the resulting ‘thebuggenie’ directory to the document root of your server (in XAMPP, it’s the htdocs directory).
03 Launch XAMPP and start installation
Open the terminal and start XAMPP by executing the ‘/opt/lampp/lampp start’ command as root. Then point your browser to https://127.0.0.1/thebuggenie/install.php. Agree to the licensing terms and press Continue. Make sure that you have all the required info, then press the ‘Start installation’ button to begin the installation process.
04 Installation step 1
Provide the required database connection information and hit the Continue button. When the database connection has been established, press the ‘Start installing’ button. Modify the default server information if necessary, choose the desired language and theme, then press Continue.
05 Installation step 2
Next, specify the available settings. If you want to use The Bug Genie as a private system, enable the ‘Require login’ options and set the ‘Default user is a guest user’ option to No. Adjust other settings accordingly and press Continue. If you want to make your The Bug Genie installation public, leave all settings at their default values.
06 Installation step 3
The Bug Genie comes with a few handy modules which extend the application’s default functionality. Among other things, these modules provide search, messaging, and calendaring features as well as enabling integration with SVN repositories. All the available modules are enabled by default, but you can turn them off individually, if needed.
07 Finish installation
Hit the ‘Finish installation’ button, note the default administrator credentials (username: Administrator, password: admin), and press the ‘Start using The Bug Genie’ button to go to The Bug Genie’s main page.
08 Tweak account details
The first thing you might want to do is to change the default account settings. To do this, click on the ‘Edit my account details’ link in the ‘Common actions’ pane and specify details such as your real name, avatar, email address and time zone. Press Save when you are done.
09 Modify general settings
To tweak the system’s default settings, click on the ‘Configuration center’ tab in the navigation bar and click on the ‘General settings’ link in the ‘General configuration’ pane. Here you can modify the available options to your liking.
10 Add product
The next step is to populate The Bug Genie with products. Click on the ‘Manage products’ link in the ‘Reporting issues’ pane, enter a name for your product in the ‘Add a product’ field, and press the plus button. In the ‘Product information’ section, provide general information about the product, such as its description and URL, and specify the desired product settings.
11 Add editions, builds and components
Each product in The Bug Genie must have at least one edition, which may have several builds and components. To add an edition, switch to the ‘Editions, builds & components’ section, give the edition a descriptive name in the ‘Add an edition’ field and press the plus button. Then click on the created edition to add builds and components.
12 Tweak other reporting settings
Using commands in the ‘Reporting issues’ pane, you can tweak other reporting settings, such as issue types (bug reports, feature requests, tasks etc), resolution types (can’t reproduce, won’t fix, resolved etc), status types (confirmed, ready for QA, closed etc), and user states (available, busy, offline etc).
13 Add users
Next, you should populate The Bug Genie with users. To add a user, click on the ‘Manage users’ link in the ‘Users, teams and groups’ pane, click ‘Add user’ and enter the required information, such as username, email address, group and real name.
14 Working with permissions (part 1)
The Bug Genie sports a powerful and flexible permission system, and permissions can be defined on four levels: user, team members, members of groups, and everyone. Keep in mind that user permissions override anything else, team permissions override group permissions, and group permissions override the everyone permissions.
15 Working with permissions (part 2)
To see how the permission system works in practice, let’s define permissions for the Everyone group. To do this, click on the ‘Manage teams & groups’ link in the ‘Users, teams and groups’ pane, then click on the Everyone group. The Bug Genie’s permissions are represented by coloured flags. The blue flag means that the permission is not explicitly granted for this user, team or group. The yellow flag signifies that the user has limited access (ie read-only) to the specific item. Finally, the green flag means that the user has
16 Working with permissions (part 3)
To grant full permission to a product, click on the red flag next to it. You can then configure product-specific settings, such as ‘Can vote for issues’, ‘Can assign issues’, ‘Can edit issue text’, ‘Can add comments’, and so on.
17 Configuring user permissions
In a similar manner, you can configure permissions for a specific user. Switch to the ‘Manage users’ page and press the ‘Set permissions’ link next to the user and then set the permission flags as described in the previous step.
18 Configure email notification feature
To enable email notifications in The Bug Genie, you have to configure email server settings. To do this, click on the ‘Manage modules’ link in the ‘Configure modules’ pane and make sure that the Mail notification module is enabled. Then click on the ‘Configure Mail notification’ link in ‘Configure modules’ and specify the required SMTP server settings.
19 Enable SVN integration
You can integrate The Bug Genie with an SVN repository. This way, when you fix a bug filed in The Bug Genie and commit the fix, the system automatically updates the bug’s information. You can integrate The Bug Genie with SVN either via the command line using a post-commit script, or through a web-based SVN front end.
20 Configure web-based SVN integration
The Bug Genie supports two web-based SVN front ends: ViewVC and WebSVN. If your SVN solution has one of these repository browsers, you can integrate The Bug Genie with it by selecting the appropriate item in the ‘Repository browser’ drop-down list and specifying its URL.
21 The Bug Genie’s front page
The Bug Genie is now configured and ready to go. To start using it as a regular user, log into the system. The front page provides quick access to the frequently used features which let you communicate with other users, view your calendar and read the latest news. Here you can also see a list of products and filed issues.
22 Submit an issue or bug
Reporting a bug or an issue with The Bug Genie is as easy as it gets. Click on the ‘Report an issue’ link in the navigation bar. Select the product, edition and build. Next, select issue type, component, category and severity. Then provide a detailed description of the issue and press Confirm. Attach a screenshot if necessary and hit the ‘Report this issue’ button.
23 Manage issues
You can see a list of all issues assigned to you in the ‘My account’ section. Click on the desired issue to manage it. All commands on the issue page are grouped into several menus (Edit issue, Progress tracking, Workflow actions etc) in the main toolbar. Use these commands to update information about the issue.
24 Publish and read article
With the ‘Publishing tools’ module enabled, you can use The Bug Genie to publish and read articles and news. To write an article, click on the News & Articles link in the navigation bar and click on ‘Create new article’ in the ‘Publishing actions’ pane. In a similar manner, you can add news stories (via the ‘Create new news headline’ link) and links (via the ‘Create new link to webpage’ link).
full (ie read/write) access to the item.