Bugzilla

Bugzilla
Original author(s)	Terry Weissman
Developer(s)	Mozilla Foundation
Initial release	August 26, 1998; 26 years ago
Stable release	5.0.6 (February 9, 2019; 5 years ago) [±]
Preview release	none [±]
Written in	Perl
Operating system	Cross-platform
Available in	Multilingual
Type	Bug tracking software; Ticket tracking software
License(s)	Mozilla Public License
Website	Bugzilla.org

Bugzilla is an open-source, general-purpose bugtracker and testing tool originally developed and used by the Mozilla project. Released as open source software by Netscape Communications in 1998, it has been adopted by a variety of organizations for use as a bug tracking system for both free and open source software and proprietary projects and products.

Product history

Bugzilla was originally written by Terry Weissman in 1998 for the nascent Mozilla.org project, as an open-source application to replace the in-house system then in use at Netscape Communications for tracking defects in the Netscape Communicator suite. Originally written in Tcl, Terry decided to port Bugzilla to Perl before its release as part of Netscape's early open-source code drops, with the hopes that more people would be able to contribute to it, as Perl seemed to be a more popular language at the time.^[3]

Bugzilla 2.0 was the result of that port to Perl and the first version released to the public via an anonymous concurrent versions system (CVS). In April 2000, Weissman handed off control of the Bugzilla project to Tara Hernandez. Under Tara's leadership, some of the regular contributors were coerced into taking more responsibility, and Bugzilla development became more community-driven. In July 2001, facing distraction from her other responsibilities in Netscape, Tara handed off control to software developer Dave Miller, who was still in charge as of 2007.^[4]

Bugzilla 3.0 was released on May 10, 2007, bringing with it a refreshed user interface, XML-RPC interface, custom fields and resolutions, mod_perl support, shared saved searches, and improved UTF-8 support among other things.

Bugzilla 4.0 was released on February 15, 2011, and version 5.0 was announced on July 7, 2015.

Features

Some of the primary features of Bugzilla for end-users and administrators include^[5]:

automatic duplicate bug detection
bug lists in multiple formats
scheduled reports and charts
e-mail integration
advanced search tools
custom fields
custom workflow
user-based security and group management
multiple database engine support

Hardware/software requirements

Bugzilla's system requirements include^[6]

a compatible database management system
a suitable release of Perl 5
an assortment of Perl modules
a compatible web server
a suitable mail transfer agent, or any SMTP server

Currently supported database systems are MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and SQLite. Bugzilla is usually installed on Linux and runs using the Apache HTTP Server, but Microsoft Internet Information Services or any web server that supports a common gateway interface (CGI) such as Lighttpd, Hiawatha, or Cherokee can be used. Bugzilla's installation process is command line-driven and runs through a series of stages where system requirements and software capabilities are checked.

Videos, screenshots, and other media

You can find Bugzilla screenshots on ostatic.com.

Bugzilla demo installations can be found at landfill.bugzilla.org.

Entities using Bugzilla

Examples of entities that use Bugzilla include:

Akamai, Algorithme Pharma, BrainLAB, Briggs & Stratton, Edinburgh Instruments, Facebook, Health Data Management Solutions, Intelerad Medical Systems, NASA, Nokia, Ocimum Biosolutions, One Person Health, PREMIER Biosoft, RD Instruments, Sandia National Laboratories, Scilab, Siemens, Statistical Bioinformatics Group at University of Virginia, The New York Times, The Society of Critical Care Medicine, Vanquish Labs, Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital at UC Davis, WANdisco, Yahoo!

A full directory of Bugzilla users can be found at the Bugzilla website.