[HN Gopher] Redmine - open-source project management
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Redmine - open-source project management
Author : synergy20
Score : 120 points
Date : 2023-07-22 13:06 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.redmine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.redmine.org)
| mdtrooper wrote:
| I was working with it in a job some years ago, and I remember
| that it has a great wiki (we used for internal documentation,
| sprint docs and other things) because I am in a new job and we
| are working with gitlab (comunity edition) and the wiki is worse.
| yardie wrote:
| Ahh good old Redmine. I still use it internally. After GitHub
| allowed private repositories on the free tier I have had less
| need to use it. But now that people are starting to see the
| advantages of actual decentralized web a few of these projects
| are getting a second life.
|
| I still hold my breath when updating my Redmine server. There was
| typically an unmet dependency that crashed the whole thing. You
| get really good at reading the error logs.
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| Redmine is what I found when I was searching for a multi-project-
| trac. I loved trac. https://trac.edgewall.org/browser
| neilv wrote:
| Nice, I didn't know Redmine has a Gantt view of some kind.
| https://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/RedmineGantt
|
| I usually prefer to use a mix of Gantt and Kanban-ish board
| simultaneously, and it's important that those all are in sync
| with the task/issue system and Git activity.
| jrey2112 wrote:
| I wish I was still on Redmine. The interface turned off the
| "boss", but I've been a refugee in attempting to solve his UI
| issues through Wrike, Trello, ClickUp and more.
|
| I was never more productive as an IT Manager than with Redmine.
| It's so fast to get things entered and added, which was a boon
| for us. I miss it.
| boesboes wrote:
| I loved Redmine. Best issue tracker and planner I've ever used.
| Even the git integration was servicable!
|
| But these days everything (work related) is on Github and while
| it is pretty mediocre for issue tracking, it is better then
| having to maintaining a seprate service.
| edoceo wrote:
| Former Redmine user here; well, I get around so I see a lot of
| different systems.
|
| Back, c2005 I think, I was CTO-ing for a company that was going
| through some management changes. The outgoing CTO was a "build it
| all in-house" type (which I get!) -- however, this dude was
| extreme -- so in addition to building their own App to make
| money, they had their own Framework and ORM and X and Y an Z --
| which included a bug-tracker. Naturally, it was SHIT and nobody
| had time to work on it -- cause well the App needed to work and
| Framework (and ORM and X...) all needed actual things.
|
| One of my first steps was to drop that dead weight. One of the
| juniors had recently heard of Trac so we dropped that in place
| and migrated all the tickets (give this junior some stake). A few
| years later the team was not excited about Trac anymore and that
| same junior (now medior) was pushing for Redmine -- I was not
| excited to switch (I love stability).
|
| So I made them do the migration testing, cloning, writing the
| guides for migration, writing the quick-starts for the team --
| sort of "run the whole project". It was not trivial, there was a
| lot of pre-Trac legacy BS that had just been jammed in from that
| migration; so we wanted to clean some of that as well. Great
| learning experience for the team member -- managing and
| coding/digging in arcane/foreign systems, integrations, etc.
|
| Blah blah right...
|
| Well, that company now has that same junior, now senior in the
| Big Chair; and they still use Redmine. It's been there for like
| 15 years! I'm not a daily redmine user (anymore) but Redmine has
| a nice place for me -- less as a bug tracker and more as a give-
| a-junior-some-growth-opportunity.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| I wish I had these opportunities in my early career. Now 10
| years in with no mentorship, direction or real
| responsibilities, I'm struggling to find self-worth and
| opportunities to go up the chain. Now that I'm laid off I'm
| trying to take all of these learnings into consideration, and
| hope that I too get to climb the ladder some day.
| MistaIA wrote:
| [flagged]
| majkinetor wrote:
| Redmine is the best. I use it on the projects, as help desk, as
| HR platform, as company day to day management. Not sure why
| people look elsewhere. Its open source, extremely performant with
| hundreeds of projects and thousands of users, extremely
| customizable. What more can one want.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I introduced Redmine at my last job and it was great. I heard one
| dev say 'we would never have launched without it'.
|
| My biggest memory of Redmine is that EVERY time I thought, 'I
| wish it could do x', I clicked around and found it could.
|
| I installed it in 1 click from an Azure template too.
| digitalsin wrote:
| We've been using Redmine since about 2010 or so. We use it daily
| for ticket tracking, light PM tasks, and documentation. We've
| considered moving away from it for years, but our customers love
| it. These are customers that are extremely large financial
| institutions and the only thing I can figure is that they are
| forced to use larger, more complex systems internally (or with
| other vendors) so they see Redmine as something simple to work
| with when interfacing with us.
|
| I think it's a great app with a huge amount of flexibility from
| UI to plugins. It's easy to use, performance is quite good on
| even lower end hardware, and there is decent documentation if
| even sometimes dated. We have customers and our internal teams
| using this app every single day, day in and day out, and it just
| stays rock solid stable for years on end.
|
| That said, upgrading this thing is an absolute nightmare. And if
| you need to upgrade the underlying OS you're going to have a bad
| night or 5. The database design is very abstract so writing ad-
| hoc queries or trying to fix something manually via the db is not
| fun at all. I'd seriously rather stub my toe in the middle of the
| night on an amish made coffee table, twice, than touch this thing
| on the back end for any purpose.
| nativeit wrote:
| It probably fails to scale well, but I have found it to be much
| easier to manage using Docker.
| TrianguloY wrote:
| The interface is archaic, but their api is very powerful.
|
| On my company we use redmine to keep track of time spent on each
| protect, or even as a simplified Jira substitute. We have the
| tasks, we just need to "spend time" on them. The interface is
| slow and requires many clicks, but thanks to their api I made an
| app to do it with just a couple, even automatic if you only have
| one task!
| cout wrote:
| It's the number of clicks that got me to move away from
| redmine. I used redmine for many years and then pivotal
| tracker. Pivotal lets you expand an issue inline and edit it
| without loading a new page. If redmine had an interface like
| that, I would probably still be using it today.
| harrisoned wrote:
| I work at a small-to-medium sized ISP, and we use pure Redmine
| since 2018 for documentation, and 'internal tickets'. It's a
| really good tool, helped us get really organized. You can
| customize the heck out of it, nowadays we have really complex BIs
| to monitor tickt times, SLAs, project activity, etc. The API is
| very good and i made a ton of usefull things with it, even
| Telegram bots for our internal groups.
|
| The biggest complaint we have on it is how bad it's wiki search
| features are, and indeed they are too simple.
| AbraKdabra wrote:
| Honestly, I hate Redmine with all of my strength, we use it at
| work and it's a really really large deployment, a fuckton of
| projects, another fuckton of people and I don't really know if
| the people managing it did a terrible job or if it's just bad.
| Some years ago we needed two new types of issues with all the
| baggage that comes with it and it was HELL, we almost had to do a
| sacrifice to Satan to make it work like we needed. It's so
| granular that it becomes an inconvenience, I'd say it's the best
| advantage and disadvantage of it. Also if it weren't for the
| python-redmine package I wouldn't touch that API not even with a
| laser.
| applied_heat wrote:
| Can you provide more detail on your problem and how you solved
| it? Did you add another category? Did you add another tracker?
| pelasaco wrote:
| We used redmine pretty well. We are on jira, and works fine
| too. I guess with a fuckton of projects, another fuckton of
| users, and less structure, every tool can be chaotic.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Interesting it's GPL licensed. I've noticed a lot of these
| enterprise targeted OSS projects are. Wonder sometimes if this
| blunts the inertia of their adoption since customizing the
| software triggers a license violation if it's not shared
| somat wrote:
| Customizing software does not trigger a license violation,
| distribution does. If it is an internal tool there is no
| distribution, and there is no license violation.
|
| As a corollary redmine is written in ruby, I don't think it is
| possible to distribute it without the source code anyway.
| no_wizard wrote:
| What counts as distribution though? Is serving user's
| distribution? Or only distributing source code?
| chunk_waffle wrote:
| Long live redmine!
| andrewl wrote:
| We've been looking at Open Project, which is a fork of Redmine:
|
| https://www.openproject.org/blog/openproject-an-alternative-...
|
| I think at this point the differences are rather significant, but
| we were interested to see what Open Project's ancestry was.
| stanislavb wrote:
| Oh, RedMine. That's the project management system I used back in
| 2006 to run my first StartUp. Along a well working integration
| with SVN (if ppl remember what SVN is).
| doubled112 wrote:
| I left a job they were still using SVN in 2021. Still worked
| just fine.
| belthesar wrote:
| The last shop I worked at used Redmine. The owner loved it, most
| folks found it okay, but the UX just rubbed me the wrong way. I'm
| not opposed to working with software with classic UIs and such,
| that would have been fine if the update workflow and page layout
| made sense.
|
| I wish I could adequately convey why. Based on other commenters
| talking about the APIs being strong though, and other products
| that seem nicer (I tried OpenProject for a time and had a pretty
| positive experience with it) are built upon it, it really goes to
| show how much a good UX can make or break a project with really
| great bones.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Redmine might look clunky from a distance, and its installation
| is convoluted. However, once it works, it works forever.
|
| It's a "zero unplanned maintenance" tool which works without
| any problems, and can be extended with tons of features due to
| its extensible nature.
|
| Maybe it's about being an oldish folk who used "classical UI"s
| more, yet I still find their information density much better
| than modern "fluffy and animated" UIs. No JS animations to
| waste power, no browser version requirement, just a brutalist
| structure built around function.
|
| Paired with a powerful VM, it loads instantly, works perfectly.
| belthesar wrote:
| I don't really need a "fluffy and animated" interface. That's
| not what is important to me when I'm working in a tool. For
| me, it's more about "How many clicks do I have to do to do a
| task?", or "can I find the information I'm looking for
| quickly?" Our task creation workflow often boiled down to
| "create a bunch of tasks, work them, close them, then
| repeat". I felt like I was having to do too much work to get
| information into the app in a way that was disproportionate
| to it providing the information I needed.
|
| From a maintenance perspective I hear you though. I supported
| the Redmine install, and I've supported Jira installs in the
| past. The sheer amount of horsepower I had to throw at, and
| shenanigans I had to deal with, to support Jira is mind
| boggling. I have a small joke that the reason Atlassian is
| going cloud only for their products has everything to do with
| the fact that only they are big brain enough to understand
| how to run the damn thing reasonably, haha. And yeah,
| administering the Redmine install was "oh yeah, we have a
| Redmine instance, I should probably update that". So that is
| definitely a feather in its cap.
|
| I also can appreciate that it has a rich ecosystem of plugins
| and extensions to make it your own. I often look at plugins
| with a grain of salt though, because having more things to
| add and more dependencies to support drastically changes the
| administrative burden of a system. For me, I'd rather have
| one opinionated tool with a minimal but functional feature
| set. Fortunately, there are alternatives out there that
| enable that flow for me and my teams, so it's not like I'm
| not served.
|
| There's always the possibility that Redmine and I just never
| clicked, and that's okay. I don't _need_ to like every tool,
| and I can easily see how folks that it did work for got great
| benefits out of it. My negative experiences are personal to
| me, but do not discredit the plenty of positive experiences
| teams have had using it.
| mike503 wrote:
| I loved Redmine compared to every other system at the time,
| probably 10-15 years ago, but administering it was annoying. Even
| using their own install directions wouldn't necessarily work due
| to all the lame Ruby crap. Eventually it just fell off my radar
| as an option because of those headaches.
|
| Edit: should mention I feel like this predated ubiquitous docker
| images for everything.
| fellowmartian wrote:
| wow, what a blast from the past! we used it at my first job over
| 10 years ago.
| axegon_ wrote:
| Same, I was using it at an old job around that time. I think it
| was the fact that I we were using it alongside SVN which made
| me hate it a lot as a side effect. Funny enough, I feel like
| I'd still take it over jira - the ui is fast which ticks my
| number one box as a developer.
| synergy20 wrote:
| If you want to play with fancy UI with some modern project
| management platforms or just paying for Jira, that's totally
| fine.
|
| If you just want things to work for years ahead and focus on what
| you do, redmine will be my pick, it has everything I need,
| nothing fancy, nothing more, get the job done, from issue
| tracking, to git, to wiki, to file management, to
| use/clients/customer access, you have them all, solid.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Yes I think of it as the craigslist of project management. The
| permissions and visibility of different subprojects are easy to
| configure. Doesn't even require javascript, it's beautiful.
| crgwbr wrote:
| Huge fan of Redmine. Got introduced to it at a job in 2011, then
| switched jobs in 2015 and brought Redmine to that team. It's an
| all around great and flexible tool without any of Jira's
| nonsense.
| freedomben wrote:
| As a user, I loved Redmine. Well designed, has enough features
| but not too many. As a maintainer I haven't experienced it, but
| I'd be willing to try it.
| adontz wrote:
| I am shocked to see the design did not change a bit.
| diimdeep wrote:
| > design
|
| Maintainers inbox must be exploding with offers to design
| landing page or do React/Vue app.
| QuiDortDine wrote:
| Likewise. I used it 10 years ago and it looks the same. Good
| luck trying to get non-technical people to use it.
| harrisoned wrote:
| Non-tech people can use it with no issues, my whole company
| uses it. People just need to pay attention to what they are
| doing, and be organized. At the beginning it can be kinda
| painfull, but it's all worth it.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Why should it change? It serves its purpose well.
| jsomedon wrote:
| I think he means it's rare to see a project not blindly
| following new design trends and still doing well.
| TuringTest wrote:
| For a modern design and current agile practices you may use
| Taiga.io
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Redmine is great. Serves us without issues since 2007. I honestly
| don't understand companies using products like Jira when Redmine
| is available.
| nvy wrote:
| I'm currently using GitHub Projects for the Kannan view that
| integrates with Issues.
|
| Does Redmine have that feature?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| There's a lot of paid plugins that throw a new interface on
| it but no, base redmine doesn't have a click and drag kanban.
| It does have all kinds of project management integrated with
| git tickets, I thought the gantt chart was perfectly good
| tho.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Of course. It has ton of plugins of all kinds one can
| imagine.
| travisr wrote:
| The company I work for switched from redmine to jira few years
| ago, after using redmine since 2009 or so. It was a really bad
| decision spearheaded by a single project manager.
|
| I miss redmine. I hate having to see the constant interstitial
| loading animation in Jira. And working through small modals.
| Just load the damn page for the link I clicked on. All the
| "single page application" junk is rarely executed well. But I
| can't say that it or I'm a dinosaur. Sorry the rant.
| heisenbit wrote:
| You forgot to mention the abysmal error handling when these
| api calls fail.
| severino wrote:
| Something like that also happened at one company I worked
| for. While Redmine served the company for more than 10 years,
| and it was still doing great, the new management decided
| switching to Jira was a must. Maybe it can help other
| workflows, but for us, it didn't really improve anything, it
| only made people angrier. That was one of the reasons why I
| switched jobs.
| pmontra wrote:
| Jira is so much better now than it was the last time I had to
| use it, about 10 years ago. It's like a different product
| with the same name. Maybe it is, I don't know what happened
| in those 10 years.
|
| I used Redmine for many small projects, probably since 2007.
| It works well. It's quite simple, not many bells and
| whistles, which is OK. Maybe not many features but enough to
| get the work done.
| TheNewsIsHere wrote:
| You're not a dinosaur for hating the continued
| consumerization of products and services targeted toward use
| cases that are expert in nature.
|
| Sure, have a simpler GUI for Jira Service Desk users in a
| non-technical customer service role. Give me a different GUI
| that's not driven by designers looking to reinvent. I don't
| need that, I don't want that, and it just wastes my time.
| linuxdude314 wrote:
| It sounds like you might have a permissions issue. You can
| route issues created from Jira Service Desk to any board
| you want.
| ansgri wrote:
| Does it still require filling an update form to change any
| aspect of a ticket? Maybe we've used an outdated version or it
| was poorly configured, but I remember switching to modern Jira
| at other company to be a huge UX improvement, with interactive
| and responsive everything.
| severino wrote:
| > Does it still require filling an update form to change any
| aspect of a ticket
|
| Yes, I guess it still does, and for me it's a great thing, as
| you can do multiple changes at once and the recipient will
| just receive a single email notification.
|
| By the way, considering Jira's slowness and sluggishness, I
| think it even takes less time to submit the entire form in
| Redmine.
| lakomen wrote:
| I found it to be more of a burden than a cure, back in the day.
| Now it's irrelevant
| numlock86 wrote:
| I had to work with a brandlabeled Redmine solution (plan.io)
| which was a terrible experience. Roughly ten years ago.
|
| I remember it breaking every two weeks in different ways and
| support always told us it's the underlying original Redmine
| stuff. Never figured out if this was even true or not, but I
| avoided it since then just to be sure. Maybe other comments will
| have some success stories and change my mind.
| criddell wrote:
| We've used Redmine around ten years now (I'm the person who
| brought it in and set it up) and it's been rock solid. I
| upgrade it every year or so and other than that, don't touch
| it.
|
| We run everything in the standard configuration and as a
| general rule do not install any plugins because they can cause
| a lot of problems, especially during upgrade time.
| n3storm wrote:
| Ten years ago also redmine was rock solid, a bit slow and not
| up to today usability standards, but solid.
| jeanlou wrote:
| This is one badly built website: Cannot even see what the tool
| looks like.
| nolok wrote:
| Not sure if I'm missing the joke but in case you're serious :
| the tool is literally the website.
|
| They're dogfooding themselves eg click on issues then on one
| issue to see the ticket system.
|
| Makes a lot of sense to me.
| partomniscient wrote:
| If they are serious, this is probably the best example of
| "Can't see the forest for the trees" example I've come across
| for a long time.
|
| That said, the site doesn't explicitly say "The site you're
| reading is running in an instance of Redmine".
| FigurativeVoid wrote:
| This was the first tool I ever used for bug tracking
| professionally!
|
| I'd be curious to see what people think about it.
|
| I suspect our implementation was terrible, because I remember
| hating it.
|
| Looking at it now, it seems appealing.
| applied_heat wrote:
| I've been using redmine for a decade for creating a project task
| breakdown, tracking time on tasks and projects and using that
| data to invoice customers, as well as issue tracking.
|
| The interface works, I don't mind it. It allows export of data
| easily, and pdf generation.
|
| I wish redmine's website for showing users what plugins exist and
| are up to date was a bit better. Plug-ins always seem to fall in
| to disrepair, and can make upgrades difficult.
|
| I am running it through docker on my synology nas.
| MistaIA wrote:
| Wow, through Docker? How please? And Still with APIs?
| nativeit wrote:
| There are images for it on Docker Hub. I wrote a Redmine
| deployment spec for the PaaS I use (Caprover) for my personal
| app server. It's a lot like Docker Compose, but as it
| actually functions using the Docker API, some Compose
| features are unavailable. If you're familiar with Compose,
| you should be able to easily adapt this Caprover template:
| https://github.com/caprover/one-click-
| apps/blob/aaa12a4f37f7...
| nativeit wrote:
| Here are the Hub images: https://hub.docker.com/_/redmine
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