Cleverbox

Cleverbox is an interesting tool for managing multiple Trac instances. It works as advertised but I was frustrated with the hard coded features, which prevented Cleverbox from being an off-the-shelf solution.

First, Cleverbox automatically creates a Subversion repository for the project. You get a repository whether you like it or not. I haven't used Subversion on a new project in ages so this capability is of no use to me at all.

Second, Cleverbox only supports the SQLite database when creating a Trac environment. This choice is understandable as the SQLite data file is created automatically when Trac initializes database. A PostgreSQL database needs to be created before Trac can load the schema and initial data.

Finally, there are several hard coded data paths in Cleverbox. This effectively prevents one from running it in virtualenv, which is fairly common practice these days.

Despite these frustrations, Cleverbox is very close to what I need so I'm going to hack the code to make it work the way I want. It won't be fancy; just replacing the author's hard coding with my own hard coding. ^_^

Redmine Vs Trac

I installed Redmine to take it for a spin and my first impression was generally favourable. I'm a long time Trac user, but lately development on Trac seems to have slowed. I decided it was time to check out other options.

The one area where Redmine beats Trac hands down is the admin interface. By comparison Trac's admin interface was until recently a third party plugin which has now been incorporated into Trac itself. Even so, you will still need to edit the configuration file for some things, which hasn't been necessary in Redmine at all so far.

The other significant difference is that Redmine is multiproject. This has been been a long standing feature request on Trac, but it never designed to work that way. Converting Trac to be multiproject is possible, but it had to be forked (DrProject) and took a lot of work. In fact, DrProject has already been supplanted by Basie, so there is limit to what can be done with the existing Trac code base.

Redmine's issue tracker has one notable feature. You can enter time estimates and actual duration of work on each ticket, and display the information on a Gantt chart. Personally, I have no use for Gantt charts but I know managers love 'em, so that feature alone maybe enough to convince your boss to try Redmine.

I started a project using Redmine so that I can get long term impression. So far I haven't seen anything that I make me not use it. Oh, except maybe that it is written in Ruby. Sorry, I had to find something negative say...

Trac-Bzr Plugin

I resolved the Trac-Bzr plugin problem I mentioned yesterday. I was running a branch of the plugin for compatibility with Trac 0.11. That branch has now been merged into the trunk code, and so my version was pretty stale. The Debian freeze period kept the system somewhat stable but now that there are regular upgrades again, the breakage was inevitable. Anyway switching to the Trac-Bzr trunk code resolved the problem, so all my Trac environments are fully functional again. Woo-hoo!

(Yes, that was the most exciting event today! ;-) )