Comments for Using Trac? Try Traction. (http://www.insideria.com/2008/09/using-trac-try-traction.html)

Using Trac? Try Traction.

2008-09-18T20:59:42Z

If you've ever used Trac to track tickets for feature requests, bug fixes, or tasks, then you've probably been frustrated. Trac integrates well with SVN, allowing you to close or reference tickets in your SVN checkins and easily see the source each checkin adjusted, but it has an absolutely terrible UI. Terrible. Horrible, bad, very awful - one of the worst things I've had to deal with since becoming a UI developer.

Enter Traction. Traction is an AIR application written by Greg Owen (yup, we're related) that replaces Trac's front-end with something easier to use. It allows you to edit multiple tickets at once and aggregates the changes periodically. If you're a project lead or a project manager responsible for managing tickets, Traction is for you.

The application is still very much in development and Greg is encouraging users to submit feature requests or contribute to the code base. Download Traction here.

Comment from Andrew Westberg on 2008-09-18

2008-09-19T00:54:26Z

If you're developing in Flex, why not just use Mylyn? It eliminates the sucky Trac interface and can even auto-populate the Subclipse checkin comments with the active Mylyn Trac ticket. This is what I do and I rarely have to leave my development environment.

Comment from todd on 2008-09-18

2008-09-19T02:35:12Z

Well, in RJ's defense, he does say: "If you're a project lead or a project manager responsible for managing tickets, Traction is for you." So, maybe a developer using Flex builder isn't the target audience, but a PM getting status updates is?

Also don't forget not all Flex dev's use FB as their code editor.

And, last time I used Mylyn, it worked well for a couple of weeks and then weird crap started happening and I ran out of time to trouble shoot it, so I've been using the natural web-based ever since. Such things seem to happen with Eclipse and all the plugins riding on top of each other. Did like it while it was working, though.

Anyway, I believe there's some use for an application like this.

Comment from Alan Lewis on 2008-09-18

2008-09-19T06:06:00Z

It was my bitching and moaning about the suckiness of Trac that led Greg to develop Traction. On the eBay Desktop project I was having to triage hundreds of bug reports, and needed a better way to quickly update bugs logged in Trac. Beats anything I've ever used for bug report management

-Alan

Comment from RJ Owen on 2008-09-19

2008-09-19T15:24:43Z

@Andrew: yeah, mylyn is great. Sometimes you need to make updates to tickets that Mylyn can't handle, however, or you want to go browse old tickets, or you just need to focus on more than one ticket at once. In those cases, Traction is really handy.

It's also great if you're using git on top of SVN, which is what a lot of us here have switched to (hooray for no more .svn files!!!)

Comment from Ahmed on 2008-09-19

2008-09-19T18:51:43Z

I've installed the XmlRpc plugin but I still can't use Traction to login. Any idea?

Comment from RJ Owen on 2008-09-19

2008-09-19T19:13:37Z

Hmm, not sure. I'd suggest directing all of your support issues to Greg. He has a link to his email address on the traction website - it's Greg.Owen@effectiveui.com. He should be able to help you get it running.

Comment from Mike on 2008-09-24

2008-09-24T14:40:36Z

No screenshots? It would be nice if the Traction site had a simple gallery.

Comment from Agree on 2008-10-03

2008-10-04T02:10:03Z

Agree - no screenshots in the article or on the Traction page. I lost interest because of this.

Comment from RJ Owen on 2008-10-03

2008-10-04T05:02:44Z

If you lost interest due to a lack of screen shots, you haven't been using trac long enough to feel the sweet desperate frustration it produces. :)

I'll pass that recommendation along all the same.