Bugzilla and Trac plugins now in beta
A few weeks ago, Matt announced the new Launchpad plugins for Bugzilla and Trac.
The plugins allow bidirectional communication between Launchpad and the remote bug trackers that have them installed. Obviously, we need to test the plugins – and that’s where we need your help.
If you know of any Trac or Bugzilla instances whose administrators might be interested in installing the requisite Launchpad plugin – or indeed if you run such a bug tracker yourself – you can find details on how to install the plugins and what you need to do to get Launchpad to work with your bugtracker on the Launchpad Help wiki:
- For Bugzilla, see http://help.launchpad.net/Bugs/BugzillaPlugin
- For Trac, see http://help.launchpad.net/Bugs/TracPlugin
So, what will installing the plugins do? Well, initially, installing one of the plugins will mean that:
- Launchpad will be able to import comments from upstream bugs which are being watched in Launchpad. If you register a bug watch against an upstream bug you’ll be able to read the conversation about that bug on Launchpad, including the comments that are made on the upstream bug tracker.
- Launchpad will be able to push comments to upstream bugs which are linked to a Launchpad bug, so if you add a comment on Launchpad in reply to a comment which was imported from an upstream bug tracker, the comment will automatically be added to the conversation on the upstream bug tracker, too. This means that users of both Launchpad and the upstream tracker can view the whole conversation about the bug without leaving their preferred environments.
Once we’re happy that the plugins are working correctly we can use them to add some even cooler functionality to Launchpad:
- Launchpad will be able to forward bugs to upstream bug trackers that have the plugin installed. Users of those bug trackers won’t have to check Launchpad for bugs registered against their project; they’ll be forwarded straight to the upstream tracker.
- If a bug watch is created against an upstream bug, Launchpad will tell the upstream bug tracker which Launchpad bug is watching it. This means that not only is there a link in Launchpad to the upstream bug, but there’s also a link in the upstream bug tracker to the Launchpad bug.
The Bugzilla plugin is licensed under the Mozilla Public License and the Trac plugin is licensed under GPLv2.
If you’ve got any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us by email at feedback@launchpad.net.
