If you've ever been a part of a large development project, you've no doubt
become accustomed to having access to source control and bug tracking tools
and design document repositories. But what if you're part of smaller project
where you're responsible for setting up your own infrastructure?
Trac, an open source project
sponsored by Edgewall Software Services,
provides a complete project infrastructure that's easy to install and maintain.
Trac integrates a capable wiki engine with a number of project management
features. In particular, Trac provides a Web-based interface to a
Subversion source code repository,
a job/bug ticketing system, and basic scheduling features. Each of these is
integrated with the wiki engine. Trac can be readily adapted to nearly any project
management style.
For the purposes of this article, we'll assume that you use Subversion for
your source control system. If you're not familiar with the software, you may
want to review my recent
article on using Subversion or take a look at the
Subversion Book to get started. You
will also need a Python 2.3 installation,
the python bindings for your installation of Subversion, and an installation
of PySQLite; use version 1.x
or below, as the
current stable
version of Trac doesn't support PySQLite2.
Users of Debian-based Linux distributions can install all of these prerequisites
and Trac itself by simply executing apt-get install trac as root.
Packages for Trac can be often be found in
other repositories for distributions
such as Fedora. There are Microsoft Windows binaries for Python, the Subversion
python bindings, and PySQLite as well. If none of these options serve, the Trac
Web site has information for installing Trac on a
variety
of platforms.
The simplest deployment of Trac, which we'll outline here, involves using
its own built-in Web server. For small to medium internal projects, this configuration
should prove more than adequate. For larger or externally deployed projects,
investigate Apache-based deployment options.
There are two commands that are important in the Trac distribution:
trac-admin and tracd. In most Linux distributions they'll
be found in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin. For Windows installs, these commands
will generally be found in Python installation directory\Scripts.
To create your Trac project you must choose a location in which Trac will
keep its data. For our purposes we'll assume the directory /path/to/MyTracProject.
(On Windows it could just as easily be C:\MyTracProject.) Trac must also know
the location of your Subversion repository (we'll use /path/to/SubversionRepository).
Given this information, use the initenv command to initialize the
project:
$ python trac-admin /path/to/MyTracProject initenv /path/to/SubversionRepository
After initializing your Trac project you should able to run:
$ python tracd --port 8080 /path/to/MyTracProject
to start the built-in Trac server. Then, simply browse to http://localhost/MyTracProject:8080
to take a look at your initial Trac project.
One thing that you'll notice is that the Trac wiki is pre-populated with
pages that document the Trac system. For example, the wiki page at http://localhost:8080/MyTracProject/wiki/TracGuide
is the table of contents for the Trac documentation.
You can use the trac-admin script to configure other aspects
of your project. Let's use it to add some project components and some scheduling
milestones. While we're at it, we'll remove the sample milestones and components
that Trac places in its database. The following commands will give you the flavor
of working with the Trac administrative tool. There is also a help
command that provides a summary of all of the available administration commands.
$ python trac-admin /path/to/MyTracProject
Delete default components
Trac [/path/to/MyTracProject]> component delete component1
Trac [/path/to/MyTracProject]> component delete component2
Add a GUI and Database component
Trac [/path/to/MyTracProject]> component add GUI
Trac [/path/to/MyTracProject]> component add Database
Delete the default milestones
Trac [/path/to/MyTracProject]> milestone delete milestone1
Repeat the above command for milestones 2,3, and 4
Then add an Alpha, Beta and Release milestone
Trac [/path/to/MyTracProject]> milestone add Alpha
Trac [/path/to/MyTracProject]> milestone add Beta
Trac [/path/to/MyTracProject]> milestone add Release
Once you've set up the basic structure of your project you can begin to actually
populate it. The toolbar at the top of the Trac Web pages lets you browse your
project wiki, look at your project schedule (called the "Roadmap" in Trac),
enter tickets (which can be bug reports or "todo" tasks or a combination), and
browse through your Subversion repository.
The real power of Trac is its ability to adapt itself virtually any project
management style. Trac honors wiki formatting across the entire Trac-managed
project. Naturally enough, Trac's wiki supports a full range of the usual wiki
formatting behavior for links to other wiki pages, lists, emphasis, and so on.
Trac, however, also supports special markup for creating links to milestones
(milestone:Alpha), tickets (ticket:121), and source
code (source:trunk/MyCode.cc). Thus, you can create wiki pages
that organize access to any useful selection of project characteristics. Then,
to extend the concept, Trac honors wiki formatting not only in wiki pages but
in ticket descriptions and even Subversion check-in comments.
With this ability to interlink various aspects of your project you can create
a living view of your project's status. Consider a project being run using
agile methodologies.
Wiki pages can be used to describe user "stories" or use cases. These pages
can be linked to "iterations" that are entered as the project milestones. Developer
tasks can be entered as tickets associated with the appropriate iteration or
milestone. As code is checked in to satisfy a particular developer task, the
check-in comment can identify the task with a link to it. Thus, the project's
state can be reviewed from virtually any perspective, where appropriate details
are accessed with the click of a mouse.
In addition to integrating well with itself, Trac provides a number of features
that allow it to integrate well with the outside world. The URL scheme in Trac
is constructed in a very sensible and predictable fashion. For example the URL
in "MyTracProject" for the Alpha milestone pages would be http://trac.myco.com:8080/MyTracProject/milestone/Alpha.
The URL for the seventeenth ticket is http://trac.myco.com:808/MyTracProject/ticket/17.
Thus, it is quite easy to compose blog entries or emails that refer to aspects
of a Trac-managed project. Trac also has the ability to create reports using
SQL select statements against the ticket table in the Trac database,
allowing you to provide customized reports for project stakeholders.
All of this shows that any project, regardless of its size, can take advantage
of Trac's powerful and sophisticated planning, monitoring, and reporting infrastructure.
With a small investment of time, you can deploy and adapt Trac to your project
management strategy, allowing you to concentrate on moving your project to completion
and success.
Interesting book dispenses much needed advice, February
2, 2006
"The beginning is the most important part of
the work.", November 23, 2005