The bug tracker is broken

Clicking on the “Bugs” link on the web page gives “The requested URL /tracker/ was not found on this server.”

Yeah, I know, annoying isn’t it… I’ve not had time to fix it yet. I had not even found the time to post a new story explaining the issue until a few minutes ago! Details here:

https://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2011/11/18/bug-tracker-temporarily-offline

Andrew, have you had a chance to look into the bug tracker problems yet?

Afraid not. I do have some overdue holiday days that I need to take but I’m loathe to spend those fiddling around with a bug tracker…! We’ll see. Sorry about the ongoing delay, I know it’s pretty ridiculous having it left offline for so long. Trust me, I’ve not forgotten about it.

Might it be worth changing the link to redirect to this section of the forums? That way any newcomers won’t be confused/put off by the broken link.

I’m experimenting with it, so you may see the bug tracker online – or not. Still seems to cause spins in postgres though.

What bug tracker is being used?

It’s a Ruby on Rails component… can’t remember exactly what it’s called.

I believe it’s Collaboa. We seem to have a habit of adopting OSS components shortly before they become dead projects… I’m sure this is the second, if not the third, bug tracker we’ve used.

This has probably been asked several time but have you considered moving to a tracker that’s being actively developed? Are you completely locked in on Ruby? I’m guessing that CVS compatibility is a must – are there any bug trackers left that can read CVS?

The bug tracker appears to be back up now. Hurrah!

It suffices.

I did consider a move to the then-active Retrospectiva project some time ago. It’s not had any commits in two years now, though, so I’m glad I didn’t waste my time.

Ruby On Rails was a big thing way-back-when and it did let us get a lot of complex functionality up in quite a short time, with shared templates between all the application sections because they were all in the same language. However, a number of very stupid developer decisions (IMHO) by the RoR team – which persist to this day – mean that while it’s still a very nice framework, it’s doomed to be littered by vast quantities of abandonware.

That said, I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of open source software is abandonware – you only hear about active developments in really a very small handful of high profile projects compared to the total number started. Just look at the history of audio players on Linux, for example. Ultimately anything that’s a one-man-band is reliant on that person’s energy and nearly always. when they decide to move on, nobody else has either the talent and/or the motivation to pick it up.

Good to see the tracker working, now I (and others) can take a look at the bug list and see if there’s something we can help with.

Seems reasonably stable now (and if that doesn’t curse it nothing will! Heh). So I’ll “unstick” this topic now.