Using the OpenOSS Bug Tracker

Introduction

The MantisBT bug tracker on the Sourceforge OpenOSS site will be used for managing roadmap features and bugs in present releases. The MantisBT bug tracker is used to manage future roadmap features and current issues. The tracker allows us to manage multiple version numbers against multiple projects.

Getting Started

To begin using the bug tracker you should log into your Sourceforge account and navigate to Bug Tracker. This will establish an account for you on MantisBT which can then have permissions added by the administrator.

Relationship between projects

The sub projects created in the bug tracker concern all aspects of the project and are listed in Bug Tracker Projects.

The structure broadly follows the structure of projects described in Project Structure but also includes extra projects for tracking issues external to this project including aspects of the OpenOSS site, Tigerstripe and the TIP_RSM_Profile.

Issues can be assigned to projects and can be linked to related issues. When created, all issues should all be tagged against either a present or future version of a sub project. The structure of the component version numbering scheme is discussed in Version Numbering.

Roadmap Feature Management

In MantisBT, features are simply issues with the 'severity' tag set to 'feature' and which have been assigned to a future (unimplemented) version of a sub-project. The roadmap features can be viewed using the Bug Tracker Roadmap Page

The master roadmap features for the TIP Framework and TIP Platform projects describe the overall road map for the major deliverables of the TIP program ordered by release. Each of these 'master features' should have linked sub-features describing the implementation design planned for a particular release of a related sub-component. When all the sub-features of a master feature are implemented, the master feature can be tagged as implemented.

Roadmap features concerning the TIP Framework are created in the TIP_Framework_Features project. Framework features relate to only the specification generating artifacts.

NOTE that in order to limit the number of features we ahve to explicitly manage, we are only creating sub features for the components developed by different project leads. The profile and test projects do not have explicit features described against them since they will be updated as part of the implementation and test process for the Generators. Thus rather than create linked sub-features for all the projects in the Framework, each master TIP Framework feature should have linked duplicate sub features related to the TIP_Soap_Generator and the TIP_Doc_Generator.

The master roadmap features concerning the TIP Platform are created in the TIP_Platform_Features project. Platform features relate to all aspects of the implementation - Java implementation generators etc. Requirements for the Implementation will be a superset of the requirements for the TIP Framework and will contain sub features linked to the relevant TIP Framework roadmap features.

For example, see TIP_Framework_Feature 0000042:String based Enum support which is linked to TIP_Soap_Generator: 0000328: String based Enum support, TIP_Doc_Generator:0000253: String based Enum support and TIP_Framework_Feature:0000140: String based Enum support

MantisBT Bug Tracker External Documentation

The MantisBT bug tracker manual is available at Bug Tracker Manual

Some useful suggestions / discussion on how to use Mantis to manage a project can be found at Subject: Re: mantisbt-help Correct Use of Mantis