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What are the best free bug-tracking tools for programming?

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12 Options Considered

12 Options ConsideredPriceMercurialGit
GitLab issues
noyes
GitHub Issues
noyes
Bitbucket's bug tracker
yesyes
Redmine
yesyes
Phabricator
Yes (no largefiles extension)Yes
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GitLab issues

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Good web UI

•••
GitLab's UI is clean and intuitive. Each view is designed to not fill the screen with useless information. It displays the activity in a feed-type way in the most prominent part of the view. On top of that, there's a toolbar with buttons which can filter this feed by pushes, merge events...
Dan Strokirk
Top Pro

Issues can have weight

•••
You can set the weight of an issue during its creation (from 1 to 9) to get a better idea of how much time, value or complexity a given issue has.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Comes with integrated CI/CD solution

•••
GitLab CI makes it easy to set up CI and deployment for projects in GitLab. It supports parallel testing, multiple platforms, Docker containers and streaming build logs.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Regular updates

•••
GitLab is being constantly worked on and has a new release every month on the 22nd. Updating is also very easy through a single upgrade script.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Free and open source

•••
Gitlab is a free open source project licensed under MIT. Source code for Enterprise Edition can be found here and Community Edition here.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Search functionality is not that refined

•••
While you can search for users or projects, you cannot search for a filename. This makes GitLab's search one of the weak points in an otherwise great tool.
See 4 more ProsSee 4 more Pros

GitHub Issues

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Large community

•••
GitHub is the largest code host on the planet with over 21.4 million hosted repositories and many users. It's unarguably the largest VCS used by developers worldwide and as such, it has a vibrant community that follows it resulting in many guides and tutorials for new users. Even experienced de...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Nice and usable UI

•••
GitHub's UI is clean and intuitive. Each view is designed to not fill the screen with useless information. For example, the repository view displays only the most crucial data about that repo - on the top it displays the number of commits, branches, releases and contributors. When clicked, ea...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Simplified team management tools

•••
GitHub has easy and useful features to control teams, large and small alike. Team members can be given different powers on different projects, ranging from the ability to create them, to only being able to have read-only access.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Convenient continuous integration with Travis CI

•••
GitHub can be integrated with Travis CI for code testing and it is free for free open-source projects.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Supports Two-Factor authentication

•••
GitHub has added another layer of security to their user accounts. This layer comes in the form of Two-Factor authentication. After it's enabled, GitHub delivers an authentication code by SMS, or by a free application for smartphones. After two-factor authentication is enabled, the authenticati...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Anyone can fork

•••
Any user can fork a project and submit a pull request. If accepted by the owner, the fork will be merged with the master branch.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Excellent native apps

•••
GitHub has native apps for mobile (iOS and Android), Windows and Mac, which make code deployment easier and faster.
Endi Sukaj
Wernight
Top Con

Only public repositories are free

•••
Unfortunately, compared to some other competitors, GitHub offers closed repositories only for premium users, and the price is not cheap at all.
Alexandre Plennevaux
Top Con

Issues are not systematically linked to a specific release

•••
tuxayo
Top Con

Proprietary tool

•••
Endi Sukaj
David Villa Alises
Top Con

Only git repositories are fully supported

•••
Github has full support only for Git, while it has some support for SVN. But it doesn't have any support for Mercurial though.
See 9 more Pros & ConsSee 9 more Pros & Cons

Bitbucket's bug tracker

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Free unlimited private repositories for small teams

•••
Bitbucket offers unlimited private repositories for free, as long as the number of members in a team is not larger than 5. BitBucket does not use GitHub's pricing plan, instead of charging users for each private repo, it charges teams per number of team members. It is free for up to 5 people.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Supports both Mercurial and Git

•••
Has full support for both Mercurial and Git VCS.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Native application for both Mac and Windows

•••
Atlassian, the company behind BitBucket is also behind SourceTree, a free application for Windows and Mac wich works as a client for both Git and Mercurial which can be connected to BitBucket and other code hosting services.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Multiple authentication methods

•••
BitBucket supports GitHub, Twitter, Facebook, OpenID, Google and even GitHub authentication.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Only 5 users are free

•••
5 users free: Unlimited private repos, Dedicated support, Code reviews, Custom domains, JIRA integration, REST API.
Vlad Korolev
Top Con

Integration with other tools is not as good as github

•••
Most of the 3rd party tools ( bug trackers, CI servers, chat servers, etc) always integrate with GitHub first, and either don't integrate with Bitbucket at all or do sub par job in it. For example there are 3 separate projects to allow building and verifying pull request submissions on...
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

The UI seems old and not very polished

•••
While GitHub's UI is extremely simple to understand and very polished, BitBucket lacks a bit on this category. With a design that seems old and not as pleasant to look at.
See 5 more Pros & ConsSee 5 more Pros & Cons

Redmine

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Michael Howitz
Top Pro

User created reports and listings

•••
Searches can be saved as listings together with sorting and grouping.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Open source

•••
Redmine is a free and open source tool.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Visually appealing and has high usability

•••
Redmine's UI is very simple and easy to learn to use. It does not overwhelm users with many options and information at once.
Fonant
Top Pro

Works well out of the box, but allows easy customisation for extra data fields

•••
You can add additional custom fields to things like issues, time log entries, and so on. This allows for useful customisation of Redmine to fit different workflows and internal systems.
Fonant
Top Pro

Self-hosted

•••
You have complete control over the data you store.
Ryan
Fonant
Top Pro

Active development community

•••
The code is actively developed, and is slowly improving with time. Older versions are maintained for those who don't want to upgrade regularly.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

No hosted solution

•••
In order to use redmine you have to install it into your own server or computer where you also need to have Ruby installed first. While it's not extremely hard, it's not an easy feat for a beginner.
ParaBug
Top Con

Picky

•••
Whenever you get it to run properly, you can never be sure that additional system upgrades will leave you with a running Redmine.
See 6 more Pros & ConsSee 6 more Pros & Cons

Phabricator

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Laura Kyle
Aubrey
Top Pro

Actively updated

•••
Phabricator is quickly improving, with bug fixes and new features added often. There is an update to the changelog every couple of weeks.
Aubrey
ideasman42
Top Pro

Open Source

•••
Phabricator is open source under the Apache 2.0 license.
thermoplastics
ideasman42
Top Pro

Command Line Access (via arc)

•••
Jonathan
Chad Little
Top Pro

Visual workboards

•••
Beautiful project workboards built directly into the product alongside bug tracking and code review for effective project management.
wolf
Top Pro

Good looking

•••
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Code ownership

•••
Users can subscribe to files or even repositories and notifications will be sent when code you are subscribed to is changed.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Supports the three major version control systems

•••
Support for Git, SVN and Mercurial is available.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Expects you to use its workflow for merging code to master

•••
Phabricator expects you to use all of its workflow to merge code back into the master branch. Though this can be worked around through configuration.
See 6 more ProsSee 6 more Pros

Bugs Everywhere

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Bug state can be modified offline

•••
Users can easily change the bug state even while being offline.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Complements distributed version control systems

•••
Bugs everywhere is a distributed bug tracker, it's built to be used in tandem with distributed version control systems.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Source code hosted on Gitorious

•••
The source code for Bugs Everywhere seems to be hosted only on Gitorious, which unfortunately has been abandoned, making the source code for Bugs Everywhere unavailable.
See 1 more ProSee 1 more Pro

Mantis BT

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Open source

•••
MantisBT is a free and open source bug tracker.
Guiomar Tuñón Hita
Top Pro

Light

•••
Really light and simple. Good for simple management.
Endi Sukaj
Guiomar Tuñón Hita
Top Con

Little integration

•••
Supports little integration with code repositories, and CI servers
Guiomar Tuñón Hita
Top Con

Too simple

•••
Not powerful enough for complex management.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

No documentation can be found in the installation files

•••
The files that are included with the installer or the files that come out of the box after a fresh installation don't include any documentation.
See 3 more Pros & ConsSee 3 more Pros & Cons

Bugs

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Alexandre Plennevaux
Top Pro

Simple installation

•••
It runs on PHP and MySQL, which are ubiquitous nowadays.
Endi Sukaj
Alexandre Plennevaux
Top Pro

Free and opensource

•••
Bugs is free an Open source. Anyone can contribute to it.
Endi Sukaj
Alexandre Plennevaux
Top Con

Based on an outdated Laravel version

•••
The maintainer doesn't feel like porting it to a more recent Laravel version. So unless someone steps up, it may slowly die along with its PHP version.
See 1 more ProSee 1 more Pro

b

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Endi Sukaj
FlexibleBasmu
Top Pro

No setup needed

•••
You start by simply adding your first bug with hg b add <bug title>.
FlexibleBasmu
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Fully distributed

•••
It lives with your code. It is suitable for a completely distributed multi-user workflow without central points of failure. Users need not be online to add or change bugs.
FlexibleBasmu
Top Pro

'Get things done, not organized'

•••
b follows the principle, "the only way to make your bug list prettier is to fix some damn bugs."
Know any negative aspects of this option?
See 2 more ProsSee 2 more Pros

Lean Testing

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Endi Sukaj
Carlos Yakimov
Top Pro

Hosted

•••
Offers a hosted version, which is very helpful if you want to avoid the time and energy it takes to host a bug tracker on your own internal server.
Endi Sukaj
Carlos Yakimov
Top Pro

Slack integration

•••
Can easily be integrated with Slack.
Endi Sukaj
Carlos Yakimov
Top Pro

Free unlimited projects & team members

•••
Lean Testing is free for an unlimited number of team members or projects.
Endi Sukaj
Carlos Yakimov
Top Pro

Test plan manager

•••
Includes a manager for testing plans.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Not very popular

•••
Since it's not a very popular solution, there are not as many guides and resources for this out there. Plus, there's also a greater risk of it shutting down one day than other, more popular issue trackers.
See 3 more ProsSee 3 more Pros

The Bug Genie

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Walton Hoops
Top Pro

Open Source (MPL)

•••
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Custom issue fields

•••
The Bug Genie supports having any number of custom issue fields for any type of issue.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

The enterprise version is free only for small teams

•••
The bug genie enterprise version is free only for teams with up to 10 members. However, the open source version is free for teams of any size.
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Pivotal Tracker

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Easy to use

•••
Pivotal Tracker is based on Scrum agile methodology. The interface is basically based on columns which you can add to your screen.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Not great for tracking issues

•••
PT is a pretty good tool for agile development management. But when you start adding issues and bugs, the project backlog can become quite large because of the fact that it's missing a lot of good issue management tools that other products have.

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