How to use the Trac system
Trac is a web-based management of software projects, and is available for all SEAMLESS-IF users for reporting bugs, missing functions, glitches in design and usability as well as for collecting wishes and requests for future versions. Its goal is to simplify effective tracking and handling of software issues, and enhancement suggestions.
To use the SEAMLESS Trac system you need a login ID and a
password. If you do not already have an ID or you have forgotten your ID or the
password, please contact
Open your favourite web browser and go to http://trac.seamless-ip.org.
Start logging in by clicking ‘Login’ in the upper right corner (Fig. 1).
Figure 1.
The login screen appears (Fig. 2) where you should fill in the user name and password provided from the Trac system administrator (see above).
Figure 2.
Start by browsing tickets already submitted by others to see if your issue/problem/request has already been addressed by someone else. Click ‘View Tickets’ in the upper right corner of the screen. You will be presented a list of available ways of sorting the tickets already in the system (Fig. 3). Chose a suitable report format (All tickets by milestone is often a good choice) by clicking on it. As you can see you can also keep track of your own submitted tickets here for follow-up and to see the progress of its handling.
Figure 3.
In these reports you can explore what tickets are submitted, to whom it has been assigned, the severity etc, etc (Fig. 4). You can also look at individual tickets by clicking them in the list.
Figure 4.
If you find out that your issue is not already reported, click ‘New Ticket’ in the menu in the upper right corner of the screen (Figure 5).
Figure 5.
Fill in a description of what you want to report and the type of the ticket; defect, enhancement, missing, wish or task (Figure 6).
Figure 6.
You can change the ticket properties by using the drop-down menus in the ‘Ticket Properties’ box. Priority can be set from lowest to highest and severity from trivial to blocker on multi step scales. How these properties are set is not critical, all tickets will be individually read, assessed and labelled by the software developers in WP5.
Assign the ticket to a person. If you do not know to whom it should be assigned or otherwise are in doubt, assign it to a WP leader.
The milestone and version properties are automatically set according to what software version is out for testing, you should not have to change these in the normal case.
You can provide some keywords to help the readers of the tickets in the sorting procedure, but that is optional.
The CC field is not used.
Submit the ticket by clicking ‘Submit ticket’. There is no reply function enabled in the system, so you will not receive a receipt on your submission, neither will you be notified on the progress of your ticket. You will have to follow that yourself by looking in the system as described above every now and then.
For the interested reader lots of documentation and help functions are provided on the web page or you are always welcome to contact the SEAMLESS Trac Team:
Mats Svensson (mats.svensson@lucsus.lu.se,
phone: +46-46-2220513)