Having looked more into these development tools and this is my recommendations for going forward.
Issue Tracking.
Although Jira is a great tool and I highly recommend it, the expense is perhaps too great for somthing that has not been used in an organisation before, and therefore the benefits may not be known.
I will be looking closely at Gemini (http://www.countersoft.com/Default.aspx?PageID=10). It has a free 10 user configuration and seems, at least on the surface, to be a very effective and comparible tool. I'll let you know how it goes.
Version Control
After reading up about Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, I have decided not to go with this product either. There are more than several reports on its viability on large databases of code.
I will also be looking at Subversion. I hear its not as simple to use as SourceSafe but is free and has some very strong support amongst others I know. One quote I had was "I even resorted to reading the [words deleted here for family reading] manual, but now I understand it, its really good and simple to use".
Again, I'll keep you posted on how things pan out. If you have any comments or suggestions I'd love to hear from you.
For bug and issue tracking I'm current playing with ZenTrack, and also Subversion - hear once you get it, is quite fine.
ReplyDeleteI use SubVersion and Trac (which is the open soruce inheritor to Jira) both on Windows and on Linux. SubVersion with TortoiseSVN is far easier to use (IMHO) than Visual Source Safe, Trac can be a bit difficult to set up, but is certainly worth it.
ReplyDeleteI've started using Subversion too after coming from using Visual Source Safe. Subversion with TortoiseSVN is definitely the way to go. I even understand that CodeGear also uses Subversion for looking after the code for Delphi too.
ReplyDeleteBugTracker.NET integrates with Subversion. Free, open source.
ReplyDeleteI would suggest our way of tracking things here:
ReplyDeleteSubversion + Redmine (www.redmine.com)
Multiply project management, issue tracking (email automation too), easy management interface ... a lot better than Track....