Released a new Trac plugin...

At my workplace, we like to follow an Agile development methodology called Scrum. Turns out there is a bit of an issue… most issue trackers don’t allow us to organize tickets the way we need to. We’ve been using Trac for a long time (before we started using Scrum), and it’s one of the few tools that pretty much everyone likes. I’ve looked at other issue trackers (Bugzilla, Jira, Scarab, Roundup, etc), but they’re either costly, too heavyweight, or just plain don’t do what we need them to.

So, several weeks ago, I decided I’d make a dent in getting us closer to an ideal situation. I created a Trac plugin that allows you to prioritize your backlog using drag-and-drop in your browser. On top of that, it shows milestones on the side, and you can drag-and-drop tickets onto them to assign them into that milestone. It makes laying out your priorities and assigning them into sprints (milestones) a breeze.

For the little bit of actual code that comprises the plugin, it was a long road to get there. I cycled through 4 javascript toolkits before landing on Dojo. I learned quite a bit about Ajax–although I’m certain I have more to learn, and had to reacquaint myself with Genshi. In the end, it all works rather well and I’m fairly happy with the end result. I did learn that I’m terrible at web design, so it doesn’t look quite like the picture I have in my head, but it works. :-)

If you’re interested, I’ve released the plugin on Launchpad as trac-backlog.