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.svg){kind=logo} Buggie, the mascot of Bugzilla | |
Screenshot  Bugzilla in action onbugzilla | |
| Original author(s) | Terry Weissman |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Mozilla Foundation |
| Initial release | August 26, 1998; 26 years ago (1998-08-26)[1] |
| Stable release | |
| Preview release | 5.9.1 (September 3, 2024; 7 months ago (2024-09-03)[3]) [±] |
| Repository | |
| Written in | Perl |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Available in | Multiple languages |
| Type | Bug tracking system |
| License | Mozilla Public License |
| Website | www |
Bugzilla is aweb-based general-purposebug tracking system andtesting tool originally developed and used by theMozilla project, andlicensed under theMozilla Public License.
Released asopen-source software byNetscape Communications in 1998, it has been adopted by a variety of organizations for use as abug tracking system for bothfree and open-source software andproprietary projects and products. Bugzilla is used, among others, by theMozilla Foundation,WebKit,Linux kernel,FreeBSD,[4]KDE,Apache,Eclipse andLibreOffice.[5] Red Hat uses it, but is gradually migrating its product to useJira.[6][7] It is alsoself-hosting.[8]
Bugzilla was originally devised by Terry Weissman in 1998 for the nascentMozilla.org project, as anopen source application to replace the in-house system then in use at Netscape Communications for tracking defects in theNetscape Communicator suite. Bugzilla was originally written inTcl, but Weissman decided to port it toPerl before its release as part of Netscape's early open-source code drops, in the hope that more people would be able to contribute to it, given that Perl seemed to be a more popular language at the time.[9]
Bugzilla 2.0 was the result of that port to Perl, and the first version was released to the public via anonymousCVS. In April 2000, Weissman handed over control of the Bugzilla project toTara Hernandez. Under her 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, Hernandez handed control to Dave Miller, who was still in charge as of 2020[update].[10]
Bugzilla 3.0 was released on May 10, 2007, and brought a refreshedUI, anXML-RPC interface, custom fields and resolutions,mod_perl support, shared saved searches, and improvedUTF-8 support, along with other changes.
Bugzilla 4.0 was released on February 15, 2011, and Bugzilla 5.0 was released in July 2015.
Bugzilla's release timeline:[11]
Bugzilla'ssystem requirements include:
Currently supported database systems areMariaDB,MySQL,PostgreSQL,Oracle, andSQLite.[12] Bugzilla is usually installed onLinux using theApache HTTP Server, but any web server that supportsCGI such asLighttpd,Hiawatha,Cherokee can be used. Bugzilla's installation process iscommand line driven and runs through a series of stages where system requirements and software capabilities are checked.
While the potential exists in the code to turn Bugzilla into atechnical support ticket system, task management tool, or project management tool, Bugzilla's developers have chosen to focus on the task of designing a system to track software defects.
Bugzilla returns the string "zarro boogs found" instead of "0 bugs found" when a search for bugs returns no results.[13] "Zarro Boogs" is intended as a 'buggy' statement itself (a misspelling of "zero bugs")[13][14] and is thus a meta-statement about the nature of softwaredebugging, implying that even when no bugs have been identified, some may exist.
The following comment is provided in the Bugzilla source code to developers who may be confused by this behaviour:
WONTFIX is used as a label on issues in Bugzilla and other systems.[16] It indicates that a verified issue will not be addressed for one of several possible reasons including fixing would be too expensive, complicated or risky.[17][18]
Bugzilla supports finer granularity for categories and keywords and over time we will adopt more of these, making it easier to filter bugs into specific target areas. It is now easy for multiple people to track a single bug, without having to have them assigned to custom mailing lists, add attachments to bugs, and so on. Many features that people expect from a modern bug tracker are simply not present in GNATS.
Years indicate the date of first stable release. | |||||
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