Separation of concerns in a bug tracker

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2024-11-01 16:30:05

I write software, both professionally and on a ‘serious’ basis in my free time. So I interact with bug trackers. That means I form opinions about them.

Over the last few years I’ve had some recurring reasons to complain about various bug trackers, and gradually come to the conclusion that what I’m really annoyed by is a fundamental wrongness in the data representation, more than the user interfaces. (Of course the user interfaces can be quite annoying too, but that doesn’t distinguish bug trackers from any other kind of software!)

In this article I’ll present some of my complaints, and then describe a ‘separation of concerns’ principle I’d like to see in a bug tracker, which I think would make me less annoyed, if it were done well.

Disclaimer: this collection of rants is all based on my own experience – the bug trackers I happen to have used in the past. There may well be other widely used bug trackers with different properties; I didn’t do an exhaustive review of the most popular trackers I haven’t used.

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