[mylar-dev] integrating weird issue-tracking providers

[Eugene Kuleshov <eu@xxxxxxxx>]

 I'd like to clarify/suggest one more thing about issue-tracking providers.

 In reality there are number of really weird issue-tracking systems 
around. Each of them would require custom provider and in some cases it 
is almost impossible to implement. E.g. IBM and Borland's enterprise 
issue-tracking systems, SourceForge's tracker, ancient versions of JIRA 
(one of the repositories I have to deal with), customized Bugzilla 
(CollabNet portals like tigris.org, java.net and dev2dev.bea.com), etc.

 However majority of those beasts provide a web-based UI and have email 
(and more rarely RSS) notification about new issues or issue changes. 
This should allow to integrate Mylar with pretty much any type of the 
issue-tracking systems with very reasonable dev effort, as long as there 
is an RSS feed or personal email box accessible trough JavaMail-friendly 
API like pop3/imap and possibly Lotus Notes.

 So, it is very important to agree on a common API for issue-tracking 
repositories. It should at least provide global name space, like type + 
url (or label) for all issue-tracking repositories registered in a 
workspace, so this model could be used by plugin contributors.

 I think that email/rss-based provider fits nicely into the API 
originally implemented for Bugzilla Integration Plugin. So, it should be 
a good starting point. 
http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/%7Echeckout%7E/platform-vcm-home/docs/online/bugs-plugin/index.html

 This may have some impact on Mylar issue 106938 "Implement "new" 
marker for Bugzilla query" because "new" marker should be contributed by 
the repository plugin and could even reside on a server if there is such 
support (like for pop3/imap).
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs//show_bug.cgi?id=106938

 regards,
 Eugene