Project gold mine

Andrew put me onto this software called Redmine, another project management issue tracker thing. In fact, it comes closer to the illusive perfect software then any of the others i’ve tried or seen. While it is lacking some things that i’d want to see in a personal todo manager, for running a software, or any digital project, this thing is the bee’s knees.

Its got two things that i didn’t have on my master list: Workflow, and integration with version control software. Both of these are going on my list. And it doesn’t just work with one or two, but 5! Subversion, CVS, Mercurial, Darcs and Bazaar.

While it is a bit sparse on documentation, it didn’t take me long to figure out that it has a lot to like: Flexible access management, roles, projects with sub-projects, documents (wiki), files, trackers (issue lists), calendar, gantt chart, time tracking and easy moving of items from one project/list to another. Its open source, programmed with Ruby on Rails. Not as easy to setup as one might want, but not that bad either. Easier on windows, and if you are on a GNU/Linux, well, you should know your way around that system anyway.

Its kind of like Trac, but, i think, better. The interface is nicer, and the setup was less painful. Getting Trac to play nice with SVN on Ubuntu was very difficult for me. Also, creating new projects in Redmine is simplicity. Not quite so in Trac. I should note that i tried out Trac quite a while ago, so i’m sure it has improved since then.

If you are looking for a tool to help manage software or web projects, i recommend this one.