Bug Tracking

Prelude

As mentioned in the previous article, email is an insufficent way to manage bugs. That's why it's recommended to use specialized bug tracking software.

This tutorial will show you how to setup and use the Mantis bug tracker.

Gather needed materials

Download mantis from Mantis and upload the package to your website.

Create the database

Create a database ahead of time. For example use phpmyadmin for this task. There are many tutorials on this subject, search.

Preparing the database for use

You need to populate the database, this is very easy if you have access to phpmyadmin, first select the mantis database from the database list, then navigate to the sql execution page, then either find the populate_sql.sql file in the /sql folder or just copy and paste all of what's contained in that file into the execute sql queries field.

This should setup the database for mantis.

Configuration of the database

Find the config_defaults_inc.php file and edit theese sections

 	# --- database variables ---------  
   
 	# set these values to match your setup    
   
   	# hostname should be either a hostname or connection string to supply to adodb.    
 	# For example, if you would like to connect to a mysql server on the local machine,  
 	# set hostname to 'localhost', and db_type to 'mysql'.  
 	# If you need to supply a port to connect to, set hostname as 'localhost:3306'.  
 	$g_hostname				= 'localhost';  
 	$g_db_username			= 'username';  
 	$g_db_password			= 'password';  
 	$g_database_name		= 'databasename';  
 	$g_db_type			= 'mysql';  

Make sure the settings presented here match your chosen database's settings.

Finished product

Navigate your web browser to the mantis directory and login with the default provided username and password that is supplied with the installation.

 	Username:	administrator  
 	Password:	root  

Familiarizing yourself

Learn how to use the bug tracking software, it's a fairly straight forward package. You need to create a project first before you can do anything with it.

There are many tutorials on the mantis site which contain usage hints and tips.