PyDitz -- a distributed issue tracker

Introduction

This package is intended to be a drop-in replacement for the Ditz distributed issue tracker. It provides a pyditz command-line program, which acts (mostly) the same way as ditz, and it adds several other nice things too:

• Whereas ditz, when typed on its own, runs the todo command, pyditz drops you into a command shell where you can run Ditz commands and get completion on command names, issue names and release names according to context.

• With PyDitz, you don't have to run it from the same directory where the issue database is; it will look in parent directories for it.

• It keeps an intelligent cache of issues, so parsing of all the YAML files isn't necessary for each command. This greatly improves speed when you have lots of issues.

• You can extend PyDitz using plugins that you write: either simple standalone files (similar to the ditz 'hook' feature), or packages that use setuptools entrypoints.

• You can use the database engine of PyDitz in Python programs to migrate bug databases to and from Ditz format, or create summary reports in your own favourite format.

Requirements

To install and run it:

• PyYAML
• Jinja2
• Cerberus
• six

To have nice terminal highlighting output:

• Pygments
• colorama if you're on Windows

To mark up description and comment text in HTML output:

• Markups (and the modules it needs to function)

To run the test suite:

• PyTest
• Mock

To build the documentation:

• Sphinx
• The alabaster theme

Installation

The usual incantation will install things:

pip install pyditz

This will install the ditz module and a console command called pyditz to invoke in a similar manner to the original ditz. As a convenience to reduce typing, a short-form version of the command is also installed: pd.

Documentation

The current documentation can be found online here. You can also look at an example of the HTML output.

License

PyDitz is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License, v2 or later.

Links

If you like this, here's a few more things you might want to check out:

• Pitz is another Ditz-alike issue tracker, also written in Python. Its bug database is not compatible with Ditz, and I didn't have much luck getting it to work, but it might work for you.

• There's another Python project of the same name called akaihola-pyditz. (I only found it after publishing mine, or I might have chosen another name.) Not updated since 2009, but it has some ideas for logging work that might be useful.

• There's also ditz plus plus, another reimplemenation written in C++, although that hasn't been updated since mid-2013.

• If you're a fan of GNU Emacs, there's a ditz-mode written for it that I maintain. It works with the original Ditz, or PyDitz.

Changes

Version 0.11 (2020-05-29)

• bugfix: Fix up a few I/O problems
• bugfix: Problem with --no-search option
• bugfix: IPython doesn't work as a plugin
• bugfix: Session generation doesn't work with Py3
• Add a standard short alias command
• Refactor the write_yaml() function
• Improve startup time
• Sort exported releases by version

Version 0.10.3 (2019-01-11)

• bugfix: Fix highlighting customization

Version 0.10.2 (2018-08-31)

• bugfix: Resolve problems with cerberus update
• bugfix: Resolve problems with markups update

Version 0.10.1 (2017-07-31)

• bugfix: Crash when trying to create db

Version 0.10 (2016-11-27)

• Improve startup operations
• Allow abbreviation of issue names
• Sort issues by last-modified time
• Implement issue-claiming commands
• Use cerberus for data validation

Version 0.9.1 (2016-03-24)

• bugfix: Line wrapping problem in terminal
• bugfix: Fix problems with version detection
• Minor package improvements

Version 0.9 (2015-09-27)

• bugfix: Bytes output if pygments is not installed
• bugfix: Initialization command doesn't work
• Implement the 'edit' command
• Implement command plugins
• Add support for markup in HTML output
• Allow per-project config file
• New command to list all issues
• Add project file to version control
• Add validation schemas
• Search more fields with grep

Version 0.8.1 (2015-08-18)

• bugfix: Fix non-ASCII text in issue data
• bugfix: HTML plugin load failure

Version 0.8 (2014-12-05)

• bugfix: Grep arguments not handled correctly
• Allow customization of HTML output
• Allow issues to be specified by ID
• Add progress time indicator to 'show' and HTML
• Implement exporting directly to archive
• Add section arg to config command
• Add exporter plugin system
• Add python 3 support
• Improve the default HTML style
• Move ~/.ditzrc to ~/.ditz/ditz.cfg
• Relicense under LGPL

Version 0.7 (2014-09-28)

• bugfix: Handle YAML comment char in strings
• Add VCS support
• Add unicode support
• Add issue type column to HTML output
• Add command to display configuration
• Implement the 'validate' command
• Add output highlighting
• Add support for command aliases
• Add pager support
• Improve the documentation
• Wire up the remaining program options
• Improve configuration settings
• Improve logging command output

Version 0.6.2 (2014-08-10)

• bugfix: Name substitution not done in issue description

Version 0.6.1 (2014-08-09)

• bugfix: Print message on successful unassignment
• bugfix: Ignore unreleased releases when assigning issues

Version 0.6 (2014-03-28)

• bugfix: Handle non-ASCII characters when writing output
• Install as 'ditz' if required by user
• Add HTML component column if multiple components in use
• Don't show HTML release column for unassigned issues
• Print message on successful issue assignment

Version 0.5.2 (2013-12-20)

• bugfix: Blank lines shouldn't end a comment

Version 0.5.1 (2013-12-18)

• bugfix: Prompt for component when creating issues
• bugfix: Show issue status even if not closed

Version 0.5 (2013-12-12)

• bugfix: Issue names not replaced in comment text
• bugfix: Reconfigure clobbers existing file
• Add sortable tables to HTML output
• Write some user documentation
• Add a user config file

Version 0.4 (2013-12-09)

• Implement the 'html' command

Version 0.3 (2013-11-23)

• bugfix: Multiple 'issuedir' keywords in init

Version 0.2 (2013-11-23)

• bugfix: Fix up problems with blank comments

Version 0.1 (2013-11-23)

• bugfix: Fix round-tripping of issue files
• Implement all the ditz commands