Peter's Blog

I have noticed more and more projects using trac so I decided to install it and give it a try. It is really nice. It does the following:

• provides a web interface to subversion source repositories. The web interface allows you to look at different revisions of files, do diffs between revisions, all good stuff. You cannot commit changes, update or do anything with local working copies of files but these are just a batch file away.
• it provides a wiki so you can document your project however you like. The wiki markup supports links to files in subversion, change sets and the like so you have no excuses for not describing the grand picture anywhere.
• it provides a bug tracking database which is like bugzilla but cleaner and simpler.

It was easy to set up as a debian package, just a matter of installing the trac package and running the trac-admin command to create a new trac project. Tell that where your subversion repository is and you are away.

The more I use subversion, the more I like it. Not having to check files out is really nice and cuts down on the hastle: just edit any file.

Commercial development requires more formal documentation than a wiki but I do feel there could be a role for informal documentation attached to the source code: useful documentation, not the stuff that is only there to keep the QA department happy.

Oh, did I mention trac was written in python?

If I could integrate an email archive and a development blog into trac, I would have the fount of all knowledge.