More Bugs Quashed with Bugzilla 3.0 First Full-Version Numbered Upgrade Since 1998 Sean Michael Kerner
Mozilla, mostly known for its Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail application, is into bugs, too. The company has announced version 3.0 of Bugzilla, one of the most widely used open source bug tracking tools.
Version 3.0 marks the first full-version numbered upgrade release since 1998, but that doesn't mean the developers have been sitting on their hands.
"We were releasing major releases as 2.2, 2.4, 2.6, 2.8, etc.," Max Kanat-Alexander, Release Manager of the Bugzilla Project told internetnews.com. "We decided to move to 3.0 for this release because it contains several features that we've been generally working toward for several years, including mod_perl support and custom fields."
Among the new features in Bugzilla 3.0, according to Kanat-Alexander, include mod_perl extension support, which means Bugzilla page loads can occur up to six times faster than before.
Custom fields support allows privileged users to add plain text or drop-down custom fields in their Bugzilla installs in addition to the default fields Bugzilla ships with.
A new shared saved search feature will allow Bugzilla users to save searches and make them available to other users. Beyond shared searches Bugzilla 3.0 is going to be even more open because of new Web Services, which is now built into Bugzilla thanks to an XML-RPC (remote procedure call) interface.
Kanat-Alexander also noted that there are a lot of usability improvements in various areas making Bugzilla 3.0 easier to use. Though Mozilla is a user of Bugzilla it isn't the only one. Bugzilla is likely now the de facto standard bug-tracking system in use by a majority of open source efforts.
Upgrading from now legacy versions to version 3.0 is a trivial task. According to Kanat-Alexander you basically just download the new version and run a script.
Though 3.0 is a major release for Bugzilla, it remains a work in progress.
"Right now we're planning to call the next version 3.2," Kanat-Alexander said. "[Version 3.2] will still be a major version release, though. It'll have significant new features, and all that, just like all our major releases have."
Whether it'll be another nine years before Bugzilla hits version 4.0 is unknown. "If we make some really major strides toward some huge changes, there will probably be a 4.0 at that point."
