Webinterfaces for GNATS

[Frank Lichtenheld-4]

We're currently trying to set up GNATS as our Bug Tracking System.
Now we have the problem that none of the web interfaces we've tested
(mainly gnatsweb and the freebsd CGI scripts) fulfills our requirements
exactly. So we're currently looking into developing a solution,
probably based on gnatsweb.

The purpose of this email is
First: to ask whether we might have simply overlooked a more viable
solution? Recommendations welcome.
Second: to ask whether anyone else is interested in working on
developing such a solution if it doesn't already exist?

Our requirements to a BTS web interface are:
 - Optional login, i.e. easily accessible to guests and search engines
   but with the possibility to have confidential bug reports e.g. for
   paying customers and to have different access levels for admins.
   All the BSD CGI scripts don't seem to have any login support.
   Gnatsweb has it, but it doesn't seem to be easily possible to
   make it optional.
 - Support for several databases with different settings. Gnatsweb
   already seems to support that.
 - Customizable page layout. Gnatsweb has some support for that but
   it is somewhat rudimentary and once you try something only a little
   more involved you're directly in the code. So a stricter segregation
   of layout and code would be good.
 - Flexible processing of fields like Audit-Trail. The FreeBSD scripts
   have code to extract single emails and patches from fields. This is
   a very nifty feature, the code for that is a mess though and IMHO
   neither easily maintainable nor extensible.

So in summary we really search a Gnatsweb that is less monolithic and with
a improved session handling.

Gruesse,
--
Frank Lichtenheld <djpig@...>
www: http://www.denx.de/


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[Chad Walstrom]

Thanks, Frank, for your interest in GNATS and a flexible web interface.
Gnatsweb is probably the most flexible, as you noted, but is also
relatively monolithic.  It was created before MVC was really applied to
web interfaces.  Ynvge has pulled it forward and maintained it
separately from GNATS itself for some time, though like GNATS,
development has stalled.  I'm certain he would enjoy any help you could
provide.

An optional login could certainly be coded up as a default value for
user and password.  e.g. If user and password aren't provided, use the
default "guest" account.  Should be a quick patch.

Customizing the page layout would certainly be easier with a template
framework.  Mason would work, as would any number of Perl templating
engines.  Going this route would ultimately mean a rewrite, though.

I'm under the impression that any flexible processing of unformatted
fields, like Audit-Trail is always going to be a custom hack.  You can
provide some sort of helper with query format.

There are a couple projects that might help that are linked on the GNATS
project site.

gnatsperl, a collection of perl modules proving an interface to the
GNATS daemon written by Mike Hoolehan.

    http://gnatsperl.sourceforge.net/

GnatsVw is a Python rewrite of Gnatsweb by Pankaj K Garg of Zee Source
(link).

    http://www.zeesource.net/downloads/GnatsVw-1.0.tar.gz

There is also searching off sourceforge that might help:

    http://sourceforge.net/search/?words=GNATS

We can always use people to help.

Chad


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