Mantis bug tracking tool 1

calendar Nov 12, 2008 · 4 min read  en knowledgebase software  · bugtracking development opensource  ·
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In the previous article we introduced the reader to the bug tracking tools.

In this article we will analyze Mantis, an open source bug tracking tool It is very important to stress you are going to use much more time to set up an open source bug tracking tool. A fraction of this time is for setting it up, but the vast majority of your time will be spent setting it up, customizing it and recovering information on it.

Mantis

Mantis is a bug tracking software written  in PHP and MySQL. It is very fast to set up, and it has nice feature like:

  1. Very good administration interfaces. You can create projects, subprojects, users and so on. For every user you can assign different roles for each project
  2. For every project you can define custom fields, with a very huge set of properties (like "mandatory flag", and so on. You can also copy custom fields from one project to another, in a simple way
  3. It is possible to customize the workflow, at least at some extend.
Like Bugzilla, the search interface is too complex and can be a pain for an end user, but it is a step forward simplicity

Pros:

  • Easy to set up, very fast.
  • Design of email alerting is good
  • The project configuration is a snap.
Cons:
  • Very ugly interface.
  • Documentation is not organically organized, and finding something is not easy. Even installation instructions are under the stardard

Comment by kiran on 2009-01-10 21:51:08

I dont think easy installation is one of the pros.

I have been trying the installation procedure for a couple of days now and not yet successful. There is no clear documentation available as to how to install it

Comment by Raj on 2009-01-27 23:47:19

I've been working on Mantis from recent past. The tool looks great and have better integration with other test management tools. I tried the integration with Test link. Everything looks smooth.

I am not able to figure out the email notifications in Mantis. A new user signs up, He is not getting any mail from Mantis.

How do I fix this issue?

Comment by Giovanni Giorgi on 2009-01-12 17:42:37

Yes, the documentation is too a "work in progress" and it is quite bad. I have done a very basic installation, for an internal project. We didn't use so much options, but we have no trouble.

Comment by Giovanni Giorgi on 2009-01-28 11:40:02

Hi Raj, take a look to http://manual.mantisbt.org/manual.configuration.e...
Ciao ciao!

Comment by priya on 2009-06-15 15:50:05

Hi,

I have installed Testlink 1.7.5 and Mantis 1.1.6 and both are working perfectly fine on theit own.I want to integrate the two but even aftre following the instructions,I have not been possible to do so.Please help ASAP.

Below is a description of what I have done :

Mantis :

Server name : localhost

Database name : db_mantis

Username : root

Password : ' '

Testlink :

Server name :localhost

Database name : testlink

Username : priya

Password : admin

Steps Followed :

In thetestlink-> mantis.cfg.php file :

/** The DB host to use when connecting to the mantis db */

define('BUG_TRACK_DB_HOST', 'localhost');

/** The name of the database that contains the mantis tables */

define('BUG_TRACK_DB_NAME', 'db_mantis');

/** The DB type being used by mantis

values: mysql,mssql,postgres

*/

define('BUG_TRACK_DB_TYPE', 'mysql');

/** The DB password to use for connecting to the mantis db */

define('BUG_TRACK_DB_USER', 'root');

define('BUG_TRACK_DB_PASS', '');

define('BUG_TRACK_DB_CHARSET',"windows-1250");

// define('BUG_TRACK_DB_CHARSET',"gb2312");

// define('BUG_TRACK_DB_CHARSET',"UTF-8");

Created anonymous account with viewer access to all projects :

username : test

password :

In mantis->config_inc.php :

Allow anonymous login

$g_allow_anonymous_login = ON;

$g_anonymous_account = 'test';

In custom_config.inc.php :

/** [Bug Tracking systems] */

/**

  • TestLink uses bugtracking systems to check if displayed bugs resolved, verified,

  • and closed bugs. If they are it will strike through them

  • @var STRING TL_INTERFACE_BUGS = ['NO', 'BUGZILLA', 'MANTIS', 'JIRA', 'EVENTUM']

  • NO : no bug tracking system integration

  • BUGZILLA : edit configuration in TL_ABS_PATH/cfg/bugzilla.cfg.php

  • MANTIS : edit configuration in TL_ABS_PATH/cfg/mantis.cfg.php

  • JIRA : edit configuration in TL_ABS_PATH/cfg/jira.cfg.php

  • TRACKPLUS : edit configuration in TL_ABS_PATH/cfg/trackplus.cfg.php

  • EVENTUM : edit configuration in TL_ABS_PATH/cfg/eventum.cfg.php

*/

$g_interface_bugs='Mantis';

This is how i did it : http://www.teamst.org/_tldoc/1.7/tl-bts-howto.pdf