[p4] Recommended bug tracking tools

[Robert Cowham]

> For me it is not really about individual tools. It is more 
> about tool chains. If you buy into the vendor's vision and 
> align with the way they designed their tool to be used then 
> you will derive the most value from it.
> When tool use differs from the vendor vision of how they 
> should be used then that is where the value diminishes. The 
> temptation is to pick the best of class SCM, and best in 
> class issue tracker and integrate them together but that 
> really does not work very well any more.

I have recently worked with a client to integrate TeamTrack with Perforce.
For various reasons, we didn't use the P4DTI based VersionBridge (which is
"supported" by Serena), but a custom C++ implementation - the net result is
working well for them. So they are getting the benefits of TeamTrack
Workflow with Perforce jobs and changelist integration. Big advance on their
previous usage of Serena VM (PVCS VM as was).

We also used various triggers to do things like prevent various Perforce Job
fields being edited by ordinary users. This prevents conflicts and makes the
whole thing much simpler.

Other simple things include URLs to link TT to P4 (via P4Web), and P4 to TT.
In the latter case P4V does not make URLs in a job spec clickable (hopefully
this will be added soon), but a simple custom tool to do a ShellExecute
solves that.

> I think that the market is really starting to mature now. 
> Perforce is one of the last commercial SCM tools to not be 
> part of a tool chain that includes issue tracking. TeamTrack, 
> for example, is part of Serena's tool chain. Yes, you can 
> integrate other SCMs into it, but you will see more and more 
> that Serena will promote a "better together" message 
> regarding their products just like IBM Rational and Borland. 

I think there are definitely pressures in this direction, I personally agree
that Perforce are somewhat at risk of missing out due to the limitations of
jobs and workflow (its an easy lack of tick in the box against requirements
in competition with some other tools). However, some of the so called
integrations of other tools are not terribly good.

Third party integration is Perforce's current story, and I can understand
why they have gone down this route. That P4DTG has replaced P4DTI as the
toolkit of choice, is an statement of intent and recognition of some of the
issues with P4DTI, but it is still early days for P4DTG.

It would be interesting to consider moving job info to an external SQL
database and perhaps tieing rather more closely with other tools, and this
is a direction I would like to see Perforce moving in personally, though I
recognise lots of technical issues (but hey I don't have to be reasonable
when I put my customer hat on - I just want the moon!).

Microsoft's Team Foundation Server has definitely raised the bar in terms of
integration of work items and changelists (although it is perhaps still a
version 1 product in other respects...), and it will be interesting to see
the effects of this over time.

Another approach is ALF - Serena are founder members of the ALF initiative
to provide event based tracking via XML and an Eclipse based event framework
model. This is early days, but Perforce could decide to go down this route.
Jazz from IBM/Rational is another competitor here in the framework arena -
that's the problem - wait years for a framework and 2 come along at once.
Does make it less obvious which one to choose!

There are some notes on this area in the recent article for CMCrossroads
(which I contributed to):

http://www.cmcrossroads.com/articles/agile-cm-environments/lean-traceability
%3a-a-smattering-of-strategies-and-solutions.html

Robert