Home » Eclipse Projects » Mylyn » Easiest way to share Mylyn tasks across the team
| Easiest way to share Mylyn tasks across the team [message #30827] |
Thu, 27 September 2007 08:36  |
Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: Michal.Dobisek.wallstreetsystems.com
Hi all,
we use the local tasks in Mylyn and now we would like to share them
across a small team (so that everyone can see, what others do). So we
are looking for a shared repository of Mylyn tasks, with the only
requirement being easiness of the setup and maintenance (and preferably
zero cost).
I checked the existing Mylyn connectors and it seemed to me, that none
of them is reasonably lightweight (e.g. installing/maintaining Bugzilla
is IMHO non-trivial task).
Did anyone faced a similar problem? Are there any recommended solutions,
which I overlooked?
Thanks for response,
Michal
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| Re: Easiest way to share Mylyn tasks across the team [message #30966 is a reply to message #30827] |
Thu, 27 September 2007 12:21  |
 Steve Whatmore
Messages: 95
Registered: July 2009 |
Member |
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|
I had a similar problem in that I just wanted to be able to share tasks
across team members, including contexts but did not want to go to the effort
of figuring out how to install Bugzilla (although I did find a VM appliance
with Bugzilla but it was unstable).
The file based task repository (backup) that comes shipped with Mylyn
obviously does not address the issue, since the backup can be overwritten by
a team member and you could end up losing changes, although if you are
careful with who / when this file is used it can be used for a poor man's
repository.
Having subversion installed already, I was kind-of hoping that subversion
could be used for a task repository but to no avail.
Somewhere in my travels I ran across CodeBeamer (an ALM tool) that has
connectors for Mylyn. It was easy to install and configure and provides full
integration with Mylyn. Unfortunately, it does still have some bugs (in
particular spent hours is getting set to some arbitrary value when tasks are
updated) but it does provide a basic task repository.
Hope this helps.
Whatty
"Michal Dobisek" <Michal.Dobisek@wallstreetsystems.com> wrote in message
news:fdfq1n$8r0$1@build.eclipse.org...
> Hi all,
>
> we use the local tasks in Mylyn and now we would like to share them across
> a small team (so that everyone can see, what others do). So we are looking
> for a shared repository of Mylyn tasks, with the only requirement being
> easiness of the setup and maintenance (and preferably zero cost).
>
> I checked the existing Mylyn connectors and it seemed to me, that none of
> them is reasonably lightweight (e.g. installing/maintaining Bugzilla is
> IMHO non-trivial task).
>
> Did anyone faced a similar problem? Are there any recommended solutions,
> which I overlooked?
>
> Thanks for response,
>
> Michal
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| Re: Easiest way to share Mylyn tasks across the team [message #31304 is a reply to message #30966] |
Fri, 28 September 2007 09:00 |
| Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: paul.mcconkey.net
>> I checked the existing Mylyn connectors and it seemed to me, that none of
>> them is reasonably lightweight (e.g. installing/maintaining Bugzilla is
>> IMHO non-trivial task).
I looked at a number of free repositories and in the end decided on
Bugzilla. I didn't particularly like the interface and a few other things in
Bugzilla, but I have to say that it was easy enough to set up and zero
maintenance has been required. It probably helps that we set it up on a new
server and forklifted our SVN server onto it as well.
Now, the integration of Eclipse/Mylyn and SVN (Subclipse) works so well it
is hard to imagine going back. I'm sure that you could find an easier system
to set up, but it would probably be commercial. You could also maybe look at
CollabNet - they do an open source distribution of their tools.
Cheers,
Paul.
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| Re: Easiest way to share Mylyn tasks across the team [message #31719 is a reply to message #30827] |
Fri, 28 September 2007 21:23 |
Kim Sullivan
Messages: 44
Registered: July 2009 |
Member |
|
|
Michal Dobisek wrote:
> we use the local tasks in Mylyn and now we would like to share them
> across a small team (so that everyone can see, what others do). So we
> are looking for a shared repository of Mylyn tasks, with the only
> requirement being easiness of the setup and maintenance (and preferably
> zero cost).
I've been wondering about this too. Basically, I store my mylyn
contenxts and activity log in a subversion repository, so I can easily
synchronize between 2 computers. Unfortunately, this has several drawbacks:
* Since all data is compressed, merges don't work too well. I was
wondering if there would be some easy way to decompress the context data
before storing it into the repository, because it's all basicaly XML
which should IMHO merge pretty well (including human readable diffs).
But unless you actually activate one of the other's task (or change
something in it's description and save it), this shouldn't be such a
problem.
* Task numbering. All local tasks are numbered locally, so this will
lead to conflicts. This actually seems like the worse problem, because
until you have some centralized server that gives out task numbers,
there is no reliable way to solve this (and the task number is also
referenced in the activity log, so simply renaming a local task won't
do, you'd have to update all the references to it).
This of course assumes that you want to use mylyn's "native" tasks, and
not tasks provided by some connector.
I wonder if it would be possible to create some kind of connector that
would use mylyn's local tasks and share them via a subversion
repository, while working around the above limitations. It could use a
special repository layout to resolve the task numbering in the
repository, transparently changing task identifiers on "check out", and
making "remote" local tasks read only (or just not commit them).
Kim
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| Re: Easiest way to share Mylyn tasks across the team [message #31892 is a reply to message #31304] |
Mon, 01 October 2007 18:19 |
| Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: beatmik.acm.org
I agree with Paul's summary. The easiest way to ensure a smooth user
experience is to use a supported Task Repository. If the goal is to get
a free solution to experiment with, installing one of the tried and
tested ones that are currently supported is likely to be considerably
less work than trying to spin a homegrown solution that correctly
handles the concurrent access that needs to be supported by a shared
task repository.
I just added the following FAQ entry, please feel free to elaborate:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Mylyn_FAQ#What_if_I.27m_not_using_a_ Task_Repository.3F
Mik
Paul McConkey wrote:
>>> I checked the existing Mylyn connectors and it seemed to me, that none of
>>> them is reasonably lightweight (e.g. installing/maintaining Bugzilla is
>>> IMHO non-trivial task).
>
> I looked at a number of free repositories and in the end decided on
> Bugzilla. I didn't particularly like the interface and a few other things in
> Bugzilla, but I have to say that it was easy enough to set up and zero
> maintenance has been required. It probably helps that we set it up on a new
> server and forklifted our SVN server onto it as well.
>
> Now, the integration of Eclipse/Mylyn and SVN (Subclipse) works so well it
> is hard to imagine going back. I'm sure that you could find an easier system
> to set up, but it would probably be commercial. You could also maybe look at
> CollabNet - they do an open source distribution of their tools.
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| Re: Easiest way to share Mylyn tasks across the team [message #31927 is a reply to message #31719] |
Mon, 01 October 2007 18:32 |
| Eclipse User |
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|
Originally posted by: beatmik.acm.org
Kim,
While Mylyn's format for storing tasks is open, we do not recommend
using it for any kind of sharing or collaboration. This format contains
numerous implementation details, and collaboration facilities are
insulated from it via the Tasks API. As such, currently the best and
lowest overhead "poor man's Task Repository" solution is one of the free
ones such as Bugzilla or Trac or the others listed at:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Mylyn_Extensions
If someone wanted an even simpler and purely file-based way of sharing
tasks the best solution would likely be something along the lines of the
following:
193439: [connector] CSV task storage or import
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=193439
We could support a contribution of this if there is interest.
Mik
Kim Sullivan wrote:
> I've been wondering about this too. Basically, I store my mylyn
> contenxts and activity log in a subversion repository, so I can easily
> synchronize between 2 computers. Unfortunately, this has several drawbacks:
>
> * Since all data is compressed, merges don't work too well. I was
> wondering if there would be some easy way to decompress the context data
> before storing it into the repository, because it's all basicaly XML
> which should IMHO merge pretty well (including human readable diffs).
> But unless you actually activate one of the other's task (or change
> something in it's description and save it), this shouldn't be such a
> problem.
>
> * Task numbering. All local tasks are numbered locally, so this will
> lead to conflicts. This actually seems like the worse problem, because
> until you have some centralized server that gives out task numbers,
> there is no reliable way to solve this (and the task number is also
> referenced in the activity log, so simply renaming a local task won't
> do, you'd have to update all the references to it).
>
> This of course assumes that you want to use mylyn's "native" tasks, and
> not tasks provided by some connector.
>
> I wonder if it would be possible to create some kind of connector that
> would use mylyn's local tasks and share them via a subversion
> repository, while working around the above limitations. It could use a
> special repository layout to resolve the task numbering in the
> repository, transparently changing task identifiers on "check out", and
> making "remote" local tasks read only (or just not commit them).
>
> Kim
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| Re: Easiest way to share Mylyn tasks across the team [message #32383 is a reply to message #31304] |
Tue, 02 October 2007 23:22 |
| Eclipse User |
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|
Originally posted by: steffen.pingel.eclipse.org
If you have a Subversion repository setup on a central server already Trac
might be a viable solution as a task repository. It is supported by Mylyn
and integrates nicely with Subversion.
Setting up Trac is straight forward since it can use a file based SQL
database which requires no configuration. Also many Linux distributions
offer Trac packages making the process even easier.
Steffen
>>> I checked the existing Mylyn connectors and it seemed to me, that none
>>> of them is reasonably lightweight (e.g. installing/maintaining Bugzilla
>>> is IMHO non-trivial task).
>
> I looked at a number of free repositories and in the end decided on
> Bugzilla. I didn't particularly like the interface and a few other things
> in Bugzilla, but I have to say that it was easy enough to set up and zero
> maintenance has been required. It probably helps that we set it up on a
> new server and forklifted our SVN server onto it as well.
>
> Now, the integration of Eclipse/Mylyn and SVN (Subclipse) works so well it
> is hard to imagine going back. I'm sure that you could find an easier
> system to set up, but it would probably be commercial. You could also
> maybe look at CollabNet - they do an open source distribution of their
> tools.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Paul.
|
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| |
| Re: Easiest way to share Mylyn tasks across the team [message #582345 is a reply to message #30827] |
Thu, 27 September 2007 12:21 |
Steve Whatmore
Messages: 95
Registered: July 2009 |
Member |
|
|
I had a similar problem in that I just wanted to be able to share tasks
across team members, including contexts but did not want to go to the effort
of figuring out how to install Bugzilla (although I did find a VM appliance
with Bugzilla but it was unstable).
The file based task repository (backup) that comes shipped with Mylyn
obviously does not address the issue, since the backup can be overwritten by
a team member and you could end up losing changes, although if you are
careful with who / when this file is used it can be used for a poor man's
repository.
Having subversion installed already, I was kind-of hoping that subversion
could be used for a task repository but to no avail.
Somewhere in my travels I ran across CodeBeamer (an ALM tool) that has
connectors for Mylyn. It was easy to install and configure and provides full
integration with Mylyn. Unfortunately, it does still have some bugs (in
particular spent hours is getting set to some arbitrary value when tasks are
updated) but it does provide a basic task repository.
Hope this helps.
Whatty
"Michal Dobisek" <Michal.Dobisek@wallstreetsystems.com> wrote in message
news:fdfq1n$8r0$1@build.eclipse.org...
> Hi all,
>
> we use the local tasks in Mylyn and now we would like to share them across
> a small team (so that everyone can see, what others do). So we are looking
> for a shared repository of Mylyn tasks, with the only requirement being
> easiness of the setup and maintenance (and preferably zero cost).
>
> I checked the existing Mylyn connectors and it seemed to me, that none of
> them is reasonably lightweight (e.g. installing/maintaining Bugzilla is
> IMHO non-trivial task).
>
> Did anyone faced a similar problem? Are there any recommended solutions,
> which I overlooked?
>
> Thanks for response,
>
> Michal
|
|
| |
| Re: Easiest way to share Mylyn tasks across the team [message #582774 is a reply to message #30827] |
Fri, 28 September 2007 21:23 |
Kim Sullivan
Messages: 44
Registered: July 2009 |
Member |
|
|
Michal Dobisek wrote:
> we use the local tasks in Mylyn and now we would like to share them
> across a small team (so that everyone can see, what others do). So we
> are looking for a shared repository of Mylyn tasks, with the only
> requirement being easiness of the setup and maintenance (and preferably
> zero cost).
I've been wondering about this too. Basically, I store my mylyn
contenxts and activity log in a subversion repository, so I can easily
synchronize between 2 computers. Unfortunately, this has several drawbacks:
* Since all data is compressed, merges don't work too well. I was
wondering if there would be some easy way to decompress the context data
before storing it into the repository, because it's all basicaly XML
which should IMHO merge pretty well (including human readable diffs).
But unless you actually activate one of the other's task (or change
something in it's description and save it), this shouldn't be such a
problem.
* Task numbering. All local tasks are numbered locally, so this will
lead to conflicts. This actually seems like the worse problem, because
until you have some centralized server that gives out task numbers,
there is no reliable way to solve this (and the task number is also
referenced in the activity log, so simply renaming a local task won't
do, you'd have to update all the references to it).
This of course assumes that you want to use mylyn's "native" tasks, and
not tasks provided by some connector.
I wonder if it would be possible to create some kind of connector that
would use mylyn's local tasks and share them via a subversion
repository, while working around the above limitations. It could use a
special repository layout to resolve the task numbering in the
repository, transparently changing task identifiers on "check out", and
making "remote" local tasks read only (or just not commit them).
Kim
|
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| Re: Easiest way to share Mylyn tasks across the team [message #582863 is a reply to message #31719] |
Mon, 01 October 2007 18:32 |
Mik Kersten
Messages: 287
Registered: July 2009 |
Senior Member |
|
|
Kim,
While Mylyn's format for storing tasks is open, we do not recommend
using it for any kind of sharing or collaboration. This format contains
numerous implementation details, and collaboration facilities are
insulated from it via the Tasks API. As such, currently the best and
lowest overhead "poor man's Task Repository" solution is one of the free
ones such as Bugzilla or Trac or the others listed at:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Mylyn_Extensions
If someone wanted an even simpler and purely file-based way of sharing
tasks the best solution would likely be something along the lines of the
following:
193439: [connector] CSV task storage or import
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=193439
We could support a contribution of this if there is interest.
Mik
Kim Sullivan wrote:
> I've been wondering about this too. Basically, I store my mylyn
> contenxts and activity log in a subversion repository, so I can easily
> synchronize between 2 computers. Unfortunately, this has several drawbacks:
>
> * Since all data is compressed, merges don't work too well. I was
> wondering if there would be some easy way to decompress the context data
> before storing it into the repository, because it's all basicaly XML
> which should IMHO merge pretty well (including human readable diffs).
> But unless you actually activate one of the other's task (or change
> something in it's description and save it), this shouldn't be such a
> problem.
>
> * Task numbering. All local tasks are numbered locally, so this will
> lead to conflicts. This actually seems like the worse problem, because
> until you have some centralized server that gives out task numbers,
> there is no reliable way to solve this (and the task number is also
> referenced in the activity log, so simply renaming a local task won't
> do, you'd have to update all the references to it).
>
> This of course assumes that you want to use mylyn's "native" tasks, and
> not tasks provided by some connector.
>
> I wonder if it would be possible to create some kind of connector that
> would use mylyn's local tasks and share them via a subversion
> repository, while working around the above limitations. It could use a
> special repository layout to resolve the task numbering in the
> repository, transparently changing task identifiers on "check out", and
> making "remote" local tasks read only (or just not commit them).
>
> Kim
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