Over the holidays, I was sick for two weeks (boo). While resting and recovering, I took to working on our tools (yay). Specifically, TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress.. Here’s an overview of the added features, enhancements, and bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. fixes. There’s a lot (and more on the way), so I’ll try to keep each point brief. If you have any questions I’d be happy to elaborate in the comments.



Refreshed ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. design: Bigger Gravatars, more whitespace, bigger body type, and Open Sans. (If any designers want to touch things up further, let me know.)

Duplicate ticket suggestions: When creating a ticket, it will use the title you enter to return a list of “possibly related tickets”.

Cross-referencing IRCIRC Internet Relay Chat, a network where users can have conversations online. IRC channels are used widely by open source projects, and by WordPress. The primary WordPress channels are #wordpress and #wordpress-dev, on irc.freenode.net. ticket mentions: Whenever a ticket is referenced in #wordpress-dev, a link to the channel logs will be posted to the ticket. This ties conversations together and means that a discussion reached “per IRC discussion” is effortlessly documented. (As it is for record-keeping purposes, the comment doesn’t send a needless notification.)

Automatic image attachment previews: Whenever an image is uploaded (typically, a screenshot) as an attachment to a ticket, it will now be embedded inline. (See this in action.)

No more HTTPHTTP HTTP is an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web and this protocol defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands. authentication: That blasted dialog is gone. Jon Cave wrote a Trac pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party for us that validates existing WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ cookies. Also, I ported over heartbeat-like auth checks to Trac, so no more losing comments if you get logged out.

Comments column on reports: The main reports reports now have a count of comments added as a sortable column.

New “good-first-bug” workflow keyword: This should be used to identify tickets that are good starting points for new contributors. They don’t necessarily need to be easy, but they should be well-contained and not much of a rabbit hole. (This supersedes “easy-fix”, see this). We also added the existing “ui-focus” and “docs-feedback” keywords to the dropdown. Here’s the full list of keywords, with explanations.

“Open Tickets With Commits Against Them”: A special request long ago requested by @ryan, to be used as a sign of in-progress tickets. For now, you can see them on top of report 6. I wrote a script that can find these tickets, so we can do more with this data.

Email address syncing: The email you use on WordPress.org is now automatically synced to Trac for the purposes of notifications. (More details here.) The old “Preferences” link is now buried in the footer.

Also:

In the single ticket view options box, there’s now a “Show only commits/attachments” checkbox. Could be helpful when trying to scan a large task ticket.

Committers are now marked as such next to each comment. This is primarily designed to provide additional context for people new to contributing. We’ll probably do this for bug gardeners and such as well at some point.

Users no longer see “Replace existing attachment of the same name” when uploading patches, as it was often misused. (Bug gardeners can still see the checkbox.)

Trac is now 100% SSL SSL Secure Sockets Layer. Provides a secure means of sending data over the internet. Used for authenticated and private actions. . Supports SPDY, too.

. Supports SPDY, too. Added after this post was published: The default query has always been open tickets you own. This is fairly useless for most contributors. Now the default query is open tickets you reported. (example link)

The default query has always been open tickets you own. This is fairly useless for most contributors. Now the default query is open tickets you reported. (example link) Also added after this post was published: When creating a ticket, some JS JS JavaScript, a web scripting language typically executed in the browser. Often used for advanced user interfaces and behaviors. looks for some security-related buzzwords. If it finds any, you need to click a checkbox verifying you understand that security issues should be reported privately. Thanks Jorbin!

Bug fixes:

Fixed some issues with the global WP.org header Header The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. /footer. This makes Trac responsive again.

/footer. This makes Trac responsive again. Fixed deletion of comments. This had been broken, which was annoying when trying to delete the occasional spam comment.

Visited link color styles are no longer overridden.

Live comment previews no longer collapse ‘Modify Ticket’.

RSS feed RSS Feed RSS is an acronym for Real Simple Syndication which is a type of web feed which allows users to access updates to online content in a standardized, computer-readable format. This is the feed. links are no longer broken.

Known issue:

There are some encoding issues on old tickets and comments. This will be fixed soon.

That’s it for now, but there’s more in progress. Also, pretty much all of this is open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL.. For more, see meta.trac (and specifically here and here).