Had to test quite a few bug tracking systems before I could find one suitable for our next project. First I went through all the bug tracking software on Freshmeat. There were not many projects there. Then I went to Sourceforge to look for some more projects -- and there were plenty of them. Unfortunately most of the projects didn't even come close to what we need.

There was one project which stood out from the rest: Codetrack. It meets only one requirement I set earlier, but it has great promise in it. After reading the frequently asked questions on the project site, I was a sold man; No-one has done so a throughout explanation of choosing the best technology for your needs. And I'm not in need of tens of thousands of bug reports -- I'd be surprised if there was five hundred bug reports in the lifetime of my project.

As far as I've looked at the code of Codetrack, it can be modified for Savant quite easily. I've already changed the authentication scheme from cookie-based to basic HTTP authentication.

While testing Codetrack for suitability, I found a rather serious problem: The code is not compatible with PHP5. The PHP5 parser says it cannot unset string offsets. I reported this to the Codetrack team, but I'm prepared to fix it myself. We are going to go for PHP5 as soon as it hits Debian in any way not requiring MySQL.