Pro-rsoft and me been trying out new tool to keep suggestions and bugs in check. The tool i picked was launchpad.
Launchpad has your standard bug tracker that deals with bug’s priority and assignment. Any one should be able to report bugs there as soon as they get account. I felt that many of the bugs where getting forgotten and not fixed. Common case is when work around is found but at the bug itself remains.
We used this bug tracker to track bugs in 1.5.3 but its been put to real use in 1.5.4 bug hunt. As you might know 1.5.3 was kind of a turning point when Josh left maintainer spot for panda3d and after couple month pro and i decided to take over. Hopefully with the help of community we can help to fix bugs and provide community releases. Our first order of business was the new license. Panda3d license has changed a long time ago to BSD but we had no true BSD release. Needless to say that 1.5.3 release was hectic but we manage to pull it off. After using the launchpad bug tracker we discovered more and more bugs that otherwise would have been left unnoticed or forgotten. After seen all of them we agreed on a 1.5.4 release that would be as the final bug fix release for 1.5.x series. And this is where the bug tracking system really shined.
Another cool aspect of launchpad is the blueprint system. With blueprints one can request features or start discussions on them without filling up the bug tracker. Blueprints also have life of their own with approvers, implementers and even mentors. It is really and interesting system. As more goals get put into the blueprint system one could look back and see where panda3d is going and how soon we plan to get there. This tool has been massive help with the 1.6.0 release. The 1.6.0 release is not as stable release but will contain wealth of new features: the important ones being MacOSX official binary, Collada reader and mine some what humble comparatively pyro system. I don’t think we could have pulled the feature coordination for 1.6.0 without the blueprints in launchpad - i feel we would have been stuck on emails and forum postings in one big disorganized sludge.
I think the bug tracker and the spec tracker are a great tools that would help to move Panda3D into more open source mentality and help build richer open source community. When its very easy to find some thing to work on and very easy to contribute to this some thing we will get more contributes.
And without further hesitation i give you the link:
launchpad.net/panda3d
(it was a quick modification of someone else pic, so it is not really mine.).