Bugdar
The free, fast, and powerful bug tracker just took another large leap in terms of features and
speed. Bugdar 1.2 hosts a series of new features, bug fixes, speed enhancements, and minor
tinkerings.
Enhanced Searching
The search feature in Bugdar 1.2 has been greatly enhanced with features such as XML export, saved
searches, and mass-updates. With the XML export feature, search results can be downloaded and saved
as an XML file for later processing, which is helpful for importing into an external reporting
application such as Microsoft Excel. Saved searches enable your users to remember commonly-used
search queries and rerun them at their convenience and need. Finally, mass-updates allow developers
to perform a search and then update all the bugs in the result set at once.
Pluggable Authentication
For most administrators, Bugdar is just a small part of an overarching system. Many of these systems
are have pre-existing user databases, and previously, these other databases could not be used with
Bugdar without a significant amount of work. With 1.2, however, an Authentication API was created to
allow administrators to customize the way Bugdar authenticates users. Bugdar now comes with a
Drupal, phpBB2, and
vBulletin authentication modules to allow administrators to use
those existing user databases. Of course, the default authentication system is to have Bugdar
maintain its own user database.
Custom Column Ordering
Users can now control which columns they want to see on bug grids. The order in which columns are
displayed, along with which columns, can now be controlled from a user’s control panel as well as
the administrative control panel. Data columns can be combined into a single display column,
allowing for instance, Status and Resolution to be displayed together, or they can be separated out
into individual columns. This adjustability allows users and developers alike to see the information
they need.
Multiple Usergroups
In Bugdar 1.2, users can now be part of more than one usergroup. This extends the already flexible
permissions system to make the job of administrators easier by allowing them to create fewer
usergroups, and instead simply assigning a user to multiple groups.
Template Optimization
Using a caching system, the file system templates now reside in a pre-parsed and cached form inside
the database. However, editing templates is still done through the files, and whenever Bugdar
detects that a template has been changed, it re-caches it. This new caching mechanism in Bugdar 1.2
decreases Bugdar’s loading times by over a full second, bringing the average load time for a Bugdar
page to be less than 0.3 seconds.
System Requirements
- PHP 4.1.0 or greater
- MySQL 4.1.0 or greater
- 5 MB disk space
- Gettext extension (optional, only required for internationalization)