LarryRoth.net

I have been working on setting up new project management processes in our company and one of my colleagues passed along a link to Trac. After playing around with it for a couple days, I must say that it is quite an impressive app. It’s easy to setup (apt-get in Debian), easy to tweak (via it’s command line admin tool and even by tweaking the python based templates and code), and easy to use.

Trac combines a Wiki, bug tracker, and Subversion source repository browser in one Web app. It’s a nice mix of keeping project knowledge in one place as well as viewing and managing changes. I really like the simplicity and customizability of the tickets in the bug tracker.

Not only is initial setup a breeze, but ongoing project setup is easy as well. I was able to quickly add a perl script that not only setup the Trac project–with our particular customizations, but also created the source repository, and added the Trac project to the Apache config file.

If you are looking for project management support for your software projects, you should check it out.

There is a good article at IBM Developer Works about using the FindBugs static code analysis tool. Test cases are important, but when you inherit code, a good static analysis code tool can really help you out. The article is a couple years old, but still quite relevant. I thought this comment summed it up nicely. From the article:

Much of the knowledge of how a class works (or is supposed to work) evaporates shortly after it is written, in the form of implicit assumptions, invariants, and expected use cases that are clear in the developer’s head but never get written down in the form of design notes, comments, or documentation. Existing code is always harder to work with than new code.¹

Even with strong test cases, you can still miss more complex bug patterns. FindBugs can help you out.