TicGit-ng
This project provides a ticketing system built on Git that is kept in a separate branch in your projects Git repository. Originally called TicGit, it is now known as TicGit-ng to continue development and avoid namespace clashes.
About
TicGit-ng is a simple ticketing system, roughly similar to the Lighthouse model, that is based in git. It provides a command line client that uses the ‘git’ gem to keep its ticketing information in a separate branch (called ‘ticgit-ng’) within your existing git repository. All the data is file based and rarely changing, decreasing the likelihood of a merge issue. Right now, ticket branch merges need to be done manually and separately, but work is being done on a ti sync command to make this easier and more intuitive.
The idea is that it keeps your tickets in the same repository, but without mucking up your working tree. By using its own seperate branch to store its information it keeps the working trees in all your other branches untouched.
There are two interfaces available, the command line ti command and the ticgitweb web interface, though ticgitweb has many more prerequisites than ti.
It will automatically create the new branch the first time you use it, and it caches all the data (another working directory and index file) in your ~/.ticgit-ng directory by default. If you delete that directory, it will just create it again the next time, you will lose no data (except some of your saved preferences).
TicGit-ng is currently using itself to store its feature requests and bug reports.
Prerequisites
There are two sets of prerequisites, those for people who intend to just run ti, and another set for those who wish to run ticgitweb as well. ticgitweb has additional dependancies that aren't required for ti's use.
ti
Required Packages: git, ruby, rubygems
Required Ruby Gems: git
To install these packages on a Debian system, or a Debian based system like Ubuntu, do
sudo aptitude install git ruby rubygems
sudo gem install git
ticgitweb
Required Packages: git, ruby, rubygems
Required Ruby Gems: git, sinatra, haml, sass
To install these packages on a Debian system, or a Debian based system like Ubuntu, do
sudo aptitude install git ruby rubygems
sudo gem install git sinatra haml sass
A Note about rubygems
While the version of rubygems available from the repositories on Debian 5.0.5 stable will work just fine for using the command line ti program, using ticgitweb requires some extra effort.
Older versions of rubygems, such as the one available on Debian 5.0.5, will not work out of the box with the new gem repositories because the .deb in stable relies on rubyforge rather than rubygems for its operations. See this bug for an example. If you are running an older version of rubygems, you may need to get the latest rubygems package from http://rubygems.org/ or apt pinning before being able to properly install the git and ticgit gems.
A Note About The Git Gem
The git gem requires a git version of 1.6.0.0 or later, but on Debian stable, git-core is currently (Sept 6th 2010) at 1.5.6.5. This isn't a fatal problem and we can continue using version 1.5.6.5 with the git gem, but you will see notices like this if you do
[WARNING] The git gem requires git 1.6.0.0 or later, but only found 1.5.6.5. You should probably upgrade.
Please specify at least one action to execute.
If these annoy you as they do me and you've set up apt pinning, you can do
$ sudo aptitude -t testing install git-core
And those notices should go away.
A Note About Coloured Git Output
If you use [color] ui = always instead of [color] ui = true then you will encounter a problem with the deprecated git gem parsing the color codes. Because it doesn't strip the color codes before parsing the output, it chokes and makes everything explode.
Since time spent working on monkeypatching the git gem would soon be rendered fruitless by the eventual planned upgrade away from it, for the time being the suggested solution is to use [color] ui = true.
Installing
Installation on a Debian stable system. Note that the command line interface for TicGit-ng can be run from Debian stable, but some of the gems required for the web interface may require you to use apt pinning to run without errors. See below
To install TicGit-ng on your system, you can go one of two ways,
$ gem install TicGit-ng
or, you can install it from source by downloading this repository building your own gem (see below).
Usage
To get a list of all commands with short description:
> ti --help
Usage: ti COMMAND [FLAGS] [ARGS]
Options for help command:
The available TicGit-ng commands are:
recent List recent activities
checkout Checkout a ticket
tag Modify tags of a ticket
comment Comment on a ticket
milestone List and modify milestones
assign Assings a ticket to someone
points Assign points to a ticket
state Change state of a ticket
show Show a ticket
new Create a new ticket
attach Attach file to ticket
list List tickets
Common options:
-v, --version Show the version number
-h, --help Display this help
"help" is not a command
To get help about a specific command:
> ti <command> --help
## for example
> ti assign --help
Usage: ti assign [options] [ticket_id]
Options for assign command:
-c, --checkout TICKET Checkout this ticket
-u, --user USER Assign the ticket to this user
Common options:
-v, --version Show the version number
-h, --help Display this help
The available commands are:
ti list - show all tickets
ti show - show details of a specific ticket
ti new - create a new ticket
ti checkout - checkout a ticket
ti state - change a ticket state (open, resolved, invalid, hold)
ti comment - add a comment to a ticket
ti tag - add or delete a tag from a ticket
ti assign - change to whom a ticket is assigned
Usage Examples
The first time you use any command in Ticgit-ng, it will create a new branch in your repo called ‘ticgit-ng’ and setup a caching area in ~/.ticgit-ng.
If you run it without arguments, it will tell you what is available to run
$ ti
Please specify at least one action to execute.
Usage: ti COMMAND [FLAGS] [ARGS]
The available TicGit-ng commands are:
recent List recent activities
checkout Checkout a ticket
tag Modify tags of a ticket
comment Comment on a ticket
milestone List and modify milestones
assign Assings a ticket to someone
points Assign points to a ticket
state Change state of a ticket
show Show a ticket
new Create a new ticket
attach Attach file to ticket
list List tickets
Common options:
-v, --version Show the version number
-h, --help Display this help
The first time you run ti list, it will show an empty list.
$ ti list
I, [2010-09-06T15:47:52.075485 #4820] INFO -- : creating ticgit repo branch
TicId Title State Date Assgn Tags
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To add a new ticket you can use ti new -t 'Title of ticket' and give it a title in one command line.
$ ti new -t 'my new ticket'
$ ti list
TicId Title State Date Assgn Tags
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
d7f2d8 my new ticket open 09/06
For the ‘comment’ and ‘new’ commands, if you don’t specify a ‘-m’ for the message, it puts you into $EDITOR to write it. The ‘new’ action is especially useful with this, because you can also tag it and give it an initial comment when you create it this way:
# ---
# tags:
# # first line will be the title of the tic, the rest will be the first comment
# # if you would like to add initial tags, put them on the 'tags:' line, comma delim
#
To edit a ticket, such as assigning a tag to the new ticket we created, we first checkout the ticket and then use ti tag.
Always checkout the ticket you intend to edit. Some commands allow you to include a tic_id argument but that can get confusing to keep track of and most of the time several edits will be done to the same ticket anyway, so it is suggested you use ti checkout for convenience if nothing else.
#ti checkout can checkout tickets based on the TicId or based on it's place in the list
$ ti checkout 1
#checks out the first ticket, or to do the same thing by using the TicId
$ ti checkout d7f2d8
#then assign the tag
$ ti tag 'bug'
#and view the result..
$ ti list
TicId Title State Date Assgn Tags
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* d7f2d8 my new ticket open 09/06 bug
To assign the ticket to someone, use the ti assign command. I assign the ticket to myself below.
$ ti assign -u 'jeff.welling@gmail.com'
$ ti list
TicId Title State Date Assgn Tags
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* d7f2d8 my new ticket open 09/06 jeff.we… bug
To change the state of a ticket, such as to change it from 'open' to 'hold' or 'resolved', use ti state. There are 4 valid states: hold, invalid, open, and resolved.
$ ti state hold
$ ti list
TicId Title State Date Assgn Tags
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dramatic Gasp! Where did all of our tickets go? Don't worry, this isn't a bug and your tickets aren't gone.
$ ti list --states open,hold
TicId Title State Date Assgn Tags
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* d7f2d8 my new ticket hold 09/06 jeff.we… bug
By default ti list doesn't show tickets with a state of 'hold', so we have to specify that we want to see those tickets with an argument. Now you can see, out ti state hold command changed the state of that ticket to on hold. This can also be done without checking out the ticket by using ti state 1 hold.
Where ticgit expects a ticket id, it will take either the number of the ticket on the last ‘list’ you did, or it will take the partial sha each ticket is assigned when it is created – that number never changes for the life of the ticket, even across repositories, so you can email that number to someone else working on the project so they can identify it. If nothing is specified, it will use the currently checked out ticket.
$ ti comment -m "I'm a new comment"
$ ti show
Title: my new ticket
TicId: d7f2d8f6d6ec3da1a1800a33fb090d590a533bac
Assigned: jeff.welling@gmail.com
Opened: Mon Sep 06 15:52:03 -0700 2010 (0 days)
State: OPEN
Points: no estimate
Tags: bug
Comments (1):
* Added 09/06 18:34 by jeff.welling@gmail.com
I'm a new comment
ti show also has a '-f' argument to be able to see comments that are longer than 3 lines, which would normally be truncated.
The ti list command can also be sorted and filtered.
$ ti list --help
Usage: ti list [options]
Options for list command:
-l, --list Show the saved queries
-S, --saveas SAVENAME Save this list as a saved name
-a, --assigned ASSIGNED List only tickets assigned to someone
-s, --states STATE[,STATE] List only tickets in a specific state(s)
Prefix the state with '-' to negate
-t, --tags TAG[,TAG] List only tickets with specific tag(s)
Prefix the tag with '-' to negate
-o, --order ORDER Field to order by - one of : assigned,state,date,title
Common options:
-v, --version Show the version number
-h, --help Display this help
So if you wanted to see a list of all your tickets that have the ‘feature’ tag, assigned to ‘jeff.welling@gmail.com’ and are ‘open’, ordered by date opened descending, and save that view as ‘not_mine’, you can run this:
$ ti list -t feature -s open -a jeff.welling@gmail.com -o date.desc -S not_mine
Then if you want to later list tickets with the same options as you used above, use
$ ti list not_mine
Collaboration
If you have cloned a repository and would like to get the ticgit-ng branch for that repo (presuming they have one), do this.
$git branch ticgit-ng origin/ticgit-ng
This will create a ticgit-ng branch in your local repo based on the ticgit-ng branch in origin. Now you can run ti list and it will show you the ticgit-ng tickets for that repository.
Getting the TicGit-ng ticgit-ng branch
To download your own copy of the TicGit-ng ticgit branch after cloning the repo, so that you can add or alter a bug yourself, follow these instructions.
This will checkout a ticgit-ng branch and set it to track the ticgit-ng branch upstream in origin, and then checks out the master branch. You must checkout the master branch because TicGit-ng gets confused if you are already in the ticgit-ng branch when running TicGit-ng.
$ git checkout origin/ticgit-ng
$ git checkout -b ticgit-ng
$ git checkout master
This will show you all of the bugs in TicGit-ng's ticgit-ng branch.
$ ti list
To submit your changes back to the upstream maintainer, push the bugs in your ticgit-ng branch to your public repo on Github
$ git push origin ticgit-ng
Then contact the upstream maintainer by sending a Pull Request or Email and ask them to review and accept your bug changes.
Sharing your tickets with others
Sharing your ticgit tickets with other people is as easy as asking them either creating their ticgit-ng branch based on yours if they haven't already started their own ticgit-ng branch, or pulling your ticgit-ng branch into theirs.
If you host your repositories on Github as I do then this process is simplified some because you don't have to worry about hosting your repository somewhere where other people can access it to pull your ticgit-ng branch.
For example, when I want my friend wnight to have the changes I made to my tickets in my ticgit-ng repository, I do a
$ git push origin
to update all my remote branches with my current ones, and then I ask him to do a
$ git checkout ticgit-ng
$ git pull git@github.com:jeffWelling/ticgit.git ticgit-ng
$ git checkout master
to pull my changes into his ticgit-ng branch and then switch back to his master branch. Now when he does ti list it will show the changes I made to the tickets on my system.
Incorporating other peoples changes into your ticgit-ng branch
The process is much the same as above, except the rolls are reversed. Once you know they have published their changes and you have a URL to do a git pull from, you simply do
$ git checkout ticgit-ng
$ git pull SOURCE_URL ticgit-ng
$ git checkout master
Replacing SOURCE_URL with the URL you were told to pull from, now you can see the changes they made, in your ticgit-ng branch. You can easily publish these changes with a git push origin so anyone following your work can also see these changes.
Next generation collaboration
Changes made by Bruno Santos to add a ti sync command were integrated on February 15th 2011. You can now use the ti sync [options] command to sync your tickets with anyone else you've added with git remote add. To use ti sync, all you need to do is first make sure you've already added the remote source with git remote add, and then do
$ ti sync --repo REMOTE_SOURCE
if you want to pull their tickets into your ticgit-ng branch and push your tickets to their ticgit-ng branch, or
$ ti sync --repo REMOTE_SOURCE --no-push
if you want to pull their tickets into your ticgit-ng branch without pushing your tickets to their branch.
More information on using ti sync can be gleemed from reviewing the merge specs
Ticgitweb
To run the Sinatra enabled web UI for your TicGit-ng repo, simply cd to your repository and run 'ticgitweb', or 'ticgitweb -p 3456' to change the port to something other than '4567', which is the Sinatra default.
Here is what the Ticket listing looks like:
And here is an individual ticket:
Development
The original author had used rspec to write specs for ticgit-ng, but one of the maintainers since then switched it over to bacon[1][2][3] and I haven't been too inclined to switch it back.
Prerequisites
To install the prerequisites on Debian stable for testing ticgit-ng, you will need apt pinning.
$ sudo aptitude -t testing install rubygems rake
$ sudo gem install yard bacon
I pull rubygems from testing to avoid a problem with gherkin creating a syntactically incorrect gemspec which makes a lot of noise whenever gem is called. I ran into a problem when gem was installing yard, it had a problem with the documentation but thankfully the error wasn't fatal and was only about not being able to compile the documentation which I don't use, so it continued without trouble.
How To Test
To test your version of ticgit-ng, go to your ticgit-ng directory and run
rspec spec/*_spec.rb
How to generate a gem from your development copy of ticgit-ng
To create a gem from your development copy of ticgit-ng, go to your ticgit-ng directory and do
rake gem
This will create a pkg/ directory, which will contain a newly created ticgit-ng gem for you to install.
More information on developing TicGit-ng and collaborating with other TicGit-ng developers at here
More information on developing TicGit-ng and collaborating with other TicGit-ng developers at here
Alternatives
ditz bugs everywhere git-issues
Authors
Original Author: Scott Chacon (schacon@gmail.com)
Current Active Maintainer: Jeff Welling (jeff.welling@gmail.com)
For a detailed list of contributors, use git log.