When we released fixx 1.8 a couple of months ago, we were elated to deliver the biggest set of functionality in fixx since launch. With 50+ new features or
enhancements, it was inevitable that the changes would impact some of our customers in a large way.
Unfortunately for us, some of the improvements manifested as critical upgrade issues for a few customers and we would sincerely like to
apologise for this. We should have anticipated and put in additional tests for these but we did not and I would like to apologise to those customers that have had
to postpone their 1.8 upgrade because of these issues.
To be clear, the critical problems only apply to existing customers who upgraded from 1.7 and we have worked hard to resolve these
problems in the past 2 weeks.
As a result, we are releasing fixx 1.8.1 which addresses these critical upgrade issues and some major bugs reported from our 1.8 release. We would
advise all customers (even those on 1.8 already) upgrade to 1.8.1 as soon as possible.
We are no strangers to hacking at stuff here in the lab and we love building useful tools and add-ons using our own APIs. In that long running
tradition, I wanted to announce a little pet project I started a few days ago.
fixx Django Middleware (I know it's original) is the aptly named
middleware app for people who run Django sites/applications. It provides an exception handler in the middleware that allows you to log exceptions
that occur in your Django instance directly to your fixx instance encouraging pro-active problem solving than waiting for visitors to report
bugs in your Django site/app.
The middleware component does required fixx 1.8+ to work with.
You can grab a copy of the code which is licensed under the BSD
license and is free for you to modify.
Why not take a look at some of these other API-enabled tools/add-ons for fixx we are working on and even see if you can contribute?
This is a month later than we had planned but I am excited to announce that we have just release fixx 1.8 into the wild. This is our biggest feature
release yet with 63 major issues raised by customers for a while.
Here is what is in store for 1.8,
You can now perform a 1-click import from FogBugz 6.0 and above.
Ability to backup and restore an entire instance of fixx through the Admin interface.
The Rich Text editor has been modified to now support XHTML and support for Textile/Markdown has been removed.
Ability to notify issue assignee when commenting.
Ability to have "private" issues.
More functionality in the API to deal with issues and comments.
I decided that since I’m quite familiar with git, that it shouldn’t take too long to adapt the previous Subversion to fixx hook script to play nicely with git. You can find it here
The instructions for using this script to post your commit logs/messages to fixx are very much the same as that highlighted in the previous article. Just make sure to place this in the .git/hooks/post-commit of your repository and your good to go(after chmod’ing it ofcourse).
Next on the list – mercurial integration, so watch this space…
Since publishing the fixx api in January, we have received a number of requests for source control integration. As a result I’ve gone ahead and created a nice script to get the ball rolling on this front, to be ran as part of the post commit hook. A post commit hook is a script that is ran after checking in some new code to your SCM repository. Lifted directly from the svnbook itself:
Most people use this hook to send out descriptive emails about the commit or to notify some other tool (such as an issue tracker) that a commit has happened.
This opens up the opportunity for us to latch onto the post commit hook whenever we commit new code into our repository, and feed the recently changed knowledge into fixx using our api. This has a number of advantages, as it means that fixing bugs and your SCM system are no longer disjointed processes.
I bet you’ve done the equivalent of this before svn commit -m ''. Well now that commit message gets logged in fixx for everyone to see. Therefore it’s worth getting into the good practice of inputting descriptive commit messages.
If you think about regression bugs this is also ideal as you can see all the files that were changed/added in originally “fixing” that issue. This is just one of many reasons consolidating your SCM with fixx has value and is beneficial to your workflow.
Here at hedgehog lab we primarily use Subversion as our source control system for most projects, and this script in particular is tailored to work with Subversion through the magic that is svnlook. But I’m confident that this can be easily adapted to fit whatever SCM your currently using.
Note: For this script to work properly the only prerequisites are that you have a copy of fixx running, and both Subversion and Ruby installed.
Basically the script looks for the issue id, prefixed by a hashtag as part of the commit message in order to log the changes in this revision in fixx.
So if I committed some CSS changes to improve the rendering of fixx, my commit could go something like this:
svn commit -m '#12 Dashboard CSS Tweaks'
A new comment would be created under issue 12, with the following content.
Just to point out that the #issueId can be placed anywhere in the commit message, though if one is not present, it won’t be logged in fixx.
Since we want to bridge the gap between SCM and fixx completely, we have also roadmapped in new api functionality, so other options will be able to be supplied with the commit message to create, resolve and close issues in fixx sometime in the near future.
Instructions on how to go about using the script can be found within the script itself, which you can find here so enjoy!
With the release of fixx 1.6 we also published a basic REST API so you tech heads can create mashups to interface with fixx for your bug tracking needs. To get the ball rolling, Mark decided to go ahead and create a time-tracking widget using Adobe Air.
What's really nifty about Adobe Air is that it's completely cross platform, so whatever flavour of Operating System your currently rolling with, Marks widget will work fine with it.
Since we're all about Open-Source here at the lab, that's exactly what we decided to do with it, as "fixx-track" can be downloaded here, so give it a try for yourself...I'm sure you'll be impressed! Alternatively, go one better and extend it to meet your workflows.
Just to make clear this isn't an official release from hedgehog lab, as you can read Mark's experiences creating fixx track on his blog. It's more an opportunity to stress the cool things you can do with our fixx API, and we hope that this release will create some motivation for the programmers out there, to see the potential behind this opportunity. We'll even showcase your work on our site if we think it's good! Why don't you download a copy of fixx to play about with our uber API to see what you're made of.
Another small but equally useful tip I'd like to share with our readers is the ability to show and quickly navigate to any recently viewed issues within fixx. Access to this list is universal across fixx`s entirety and can be activated by hovering over the clock icon present in the bottom right corner of your screen.
This action brings into focus a list of the most recent issues this user has viewed, showing the corresponding Issue ID and Title for each of these in turn. Once present the user is able to navigate to each of these issues by selecting the appropriate one from this list.
The user also has the option to clear their history from this menu if they wish to do so. A point to note is that this pane remains present whilst scrolling and dissapears after a short period of inactivity.
The rationale behind this particular piece of functionality is to provide an easy means to navigate fixx without breaking system state by pressing your browsers back button. So the next time your busy jumping back and forth between a set of issues your currently working on, keep this feature in mind to max out your productivity levels!
I know a few of you have been holding your breath for this one, and we are pretty excited about this release too. Quite strange, considering 1.7 is
actually a bug fix release, rather than a feature-intensive one.
Nevertheless, we are very excited about the massive performance gains 1.7 gives and a reliable API. We have some interesting API-related tools and blog posts in the pipeline, so keep an eye out.
Our next stop is 1.8, which will be our final feature-intensive release for the 1.x branch (everything after that will be bug fix releases). Yes, this does mean that fixx 2.0 is already in development, and boy is it looking good! The biggest feature going into 1.8 will be a more complete API, with all the missing functionality
implemented, and some serious bundled tools/scripts for Source Control Integration and bespoke migration of bug tracking systems.
We love receiving feedback and suggestions via our people powered forums, and 99% of the time these cover important points which we resolve as soon as possible in order to maintain high levels of customer service.
It`s a rare thing, but there have been times in the past where suggestions have been made for features that are already present within fixx, similar to the insights I shared in my previous post. In this post I am going to share another of these with you.
A great example is the results of a filter, unless specified, these can return a list of any matching issues spanning over a number of projects. The way they are presented currently, shows various issue attributes such as its ID, Priority, status, Type, Title and who it`s Assigned to.
One suggestion was to add more columns to the filtered list of results which would present more meta-data to the current user, such as the Project it falls under, when the issue was created and when it`s due to be completed by.
This is a very valid point, and we took this into consideration whilst designing fixx, and we came to the conclusion that the information which is currently onscreen is the most important and fitted the workflows we created during the design phase.
To make sure people don`t go without, we also implemented a hover activated Quick Information box over each Issue ID which displays the remaining issue attributes as can be seen in the screenshot below. To show the Quick Information box, all you need to do is hover your mouse over the issue ID for a couple of seconds.
I`m betting that a lot of you were not aware of this feature at all. There are a few more of these posts on the way, so make sure to watch this space for more great tips.
Yesterday, Sarat and I were doing some pair programming on our new but shockingly large 37" LCD TV that's on the wall in our fancy meeting space in the lab.
Pair programming is fun and you learn a hell of a lot! If you want to know more about why this is the case, I suggest you read this great article by Obie Fernandez.
We were ironing out some bugs for the fixx 1.7 release, and I had a filter set-up to give me all the issues that had to be resolved for that particular release. As a result I was jumping back and forth from the filtered list of issues, to the full view of the issue we were currently working on.
It was in this process that Sarat made, what seemed to be an odd observation at the time; that I was doing things wrong. I couldn't understand how, as fixx is made to be simple. I went back to the Dashboard and proceeded to click on my "fixx 1.7" filter to go back to the list of issues we were working on.
Sarat then noted "You do realise you could have got back to that list by pressing the Issues tab, rather than navigating back to the Dashboard and invoking your filter...right?".
Obviously I was not aware of this, and feverishly tried it out to find out he was right. Of course he's right; he wrote it!
fixx remembers your last used filter no matter where you go in fixx, and when you return back to the Issues tab presents the list of issues from the last filter. Even if you apply a temporary filter without saving it, the results of that filter are remembered in your session, and can be viewed once again when you return to the Issues tab.
It's evident that I was in need of this piece of functionality, as issue tracking should not by obtrusive by any means, and it turned out to be there all along but I just wasn't aware of it being the new guy in the lab HQ. You can tell that a lot of thought gone into the design and functionality in fixx, and the more I think about it, the more it makes complete sense. As a result this is one gem I want to share.
You're either going to read this and think, how on earth did he not know that, or you're going to go away and try it out for yourself and increase your productivity. Either way I'm happier that I am now aware of this, and hope that it manages to have an impact on the way a few of you use fixx.
Yay! It's finally here. I am excited to report that we have just released fixx 1.6, which has some exciting features that you have been requesting.
The highlights of this release are,
The REST API is finally here. It is limited but a great start. You can access the documentation for the API by upgrading to 1.6 and going to /api.jsp in your fixx installation. If you would like to see specific functionality in the API please request it.
Hi everyone, I'm Damian - the newest recruit to join hedgehog lab. My official title is Product Manager (manager at only 22 years of age!), which means it's my role to manage and run development of fixx, solomon and Product X (the mystery will soon be unveiled) so we can all get plush new Audis.
I like the fact that straight away, I have been put in a position with a fair bit of responsibility, which is great as it means I get to experience all areas of business and I'm able to directly shape the future of our products. So if you have any queries or features you want for upcoming versions, I'm your go-to guy to make this happen - damian@hedgehoglab.com or alternatively add suggestions to our forums.
On this note, we are getting ready to release a new version of fixx early next year (1.6), with a 2.0 release being planned for summer 2009 which I'll be heavily involved in...get ready for some big changes!
I also want to take this opportunity to quickly talk about solomon - our CRM and web-based contact manager, which is looking mighty fine...don't worry you won't have to wait much longer! It'll be worth the wait as you will soon be able to see the thought and experience design that has went into the interface and the performance should be lightning fast with lots of JavaScript (or AJAX for your 2 point ohs) magic binding the entire thing together.
A bit more about myself. My background is in Computer Security and I have joined the lab pretty much straight from Uni. I am one of the cool kids in the lab who work on a Mac, not a PC (hello Mark!), and in my spare time I dabble with Ruby and Java, which is handy as it means I can hit the ground running with both fixx and solomon, which are both developed in Java.
In the short time that I've been here, the things that I really like about working in a start-up are transparency and team discussions. The former is self-explanatory, as it means that no business related subject is taboo. The daily team meetings and discussions are great because I'm able to voice my opinions in a group of very intelligent people. This also means the turn-around on ideas is pretty darn fast too!
I'll leave it here for now, but I suggest you watch this space for some exciting product releases and announcements over the next year.
I am pleased to announce the release of fixx 1.5, which is our biggest release yet. The release includes many key bug fixes and improvements along with 2 popular features that have been requested by you.
The new features in 1.5 are,
Brand new time reports for every project (see screenshot below).
Ability to use an existing project as a template for a new project, saving you time re-typing areas, issue types and other meta-data when all your projects are similar.
Although 1.5 does not involve an upgrade to your database, please make sure you back-up your existing fixx installation before you attempt to upgrade.
fixx 1.4.1 is a patch release that fixes a few critical bugs that could not wait until 1.5. Apologies to all our customers who have had problems with these bugs, but upgrading to 1.4.1 should resolve these issues.
From this month on, we have decided to do a frequent (at least monthly) summary post highlighting key updates for our products
fixx
The big news for fixx this month is the 1.4 release, which comes with a new iPhone interface and updated permissions for projects.
The fixx documentation has been updated to include guidance on using MySQL as a database backend to your fixx installation. We will be adding more databases to the official documentation soon.
solomon
solomon development has been coming along great and we are almost ready to close out our alpha stage to prepare for a closed private beta. Ensure you sign-up for the beta if you want to get your hands on solomon early. Meanwhile, below are a few screenshots of solomon as it is currently.
Apologies to everyone as this is one week later than we originally planned to release, but we had some final minute show-stoppers that we had to resolve for 1.4.
The highlights of this release are,
The ability to restrict users to certain projects a.k.a Private projects. To do this, you need to mark a project as restricted and explicitly add users to that project.
Key bug fixes to the client and public interfaces.
Since 1.4 involves a significant upgrade to your database, please make sure you back-up your existing fixx installation before you attempt to upgrade.
With fixx 1.4 just around the corner, I wanted to post a sneak preview of our new iPhone interface that we are introducing in fixx.
The initial iPhone interface focuses on 4 core functionality elements. You cannot do everything through the iPhone interface and we wanted to ensure that the features available suited the most common workflow scenarios when using a mobile device.
It is worth noting that this is only the first iteration of iPhone functionality to go into fixx, and future versions will be including additional functionality based on what our customers want. Head over to our forums to request an iPhone feature for fixx.
These are the core features of the iPhone interface in 1.4,
Quick access to view activity and issues relevant to you (using your saved filters).
fixx 1.3 is out! This release includes key bug fixes and some general improvements to the tagging system and searching for tags. Also look out for the cool OpenSearch feature for those of you with IE7 and Firefox.
We are all about open standards here at the lab and have always taken pride in implementing little standards-based improvements that make your life and job better while using fixx (ex. OpenID, Microformats etc.).
fixx is now OpenSearch enabled and the feature will be available from 1.3, which is due for release soon. I committed a patch last night that brings OpenSearch auto-discovery to your Firefox and IE7 browsers (and any other browser that supports OpenSearch).
When you navigate to your fixx installation, you should see the search icon in your browser search box turn blue and you should see an action to add fixx to your search engine list. You can then use your browser search box to directly navigate to fixx issues, by typing their issue number, or search for issues in fixx, even when you are browsing another site.
Note that the title of the search engine will be the same as the title of your fixx installation (so it might and probably will be different to what is in the screenshot).
Fluid is a SSB that allows you to wrap your frequently used web applications and sites in it's own browser and activate them as individual applications.
This means you get a separate application for your fixx installation that you can launch from your Applications folder (or using Quicksilver) and use the fixx icon for your application and have it appear in your dock.
Here are 2 high res logos for our products that you can use to your heart's content in your Fluid applications.
I am pleased to announce that fixx, our bug tracking system, has been finally released to the general public.
In keeping with our ideology of simple licensing structures, we have 2 different paid-for licenses available; a Commercial license that allows unlimited users and unlimited projects per instance of fixx, at $799, and an Academic license that is just a Commercial license for academic organisations, at $399.
As stated before, fixx is free to download and use for a single user, under the default Single User license. Try it out.
I would also like to thank everyone who participated in the beta program and provided their valuable feedback to help shape the first release of fixx.
We have more exciting updates to come, and an excellent road-map, so make sure you keep an eye on our blog.
We, here at the lab, appreciate the value of letting the user hack out their own solutions to problems that they may have stumbled upon that don't fit our vision. There's barely a day goes by that you won't hear Mark suggest a rubbish new feature, get instantly shot down, and then insist that he'll write a Greasemonkey script for that functionality anyway.
With this in mind, the fixx team have always maintained that there will be a fixx API, so that developers may adapt fixx to meet their bug tracking needs. While still in relatively early stages, that API is coming together and you can check out the progress in the beta by going to any issues screen and appending .xml or .json to the URI (/issues.json, for example). This was still mostly unusable (unless you want to jump through some pretty hefty hoops), until recently when Sarat committed a change to allow basic HTTP authentication. This change is not available to the masses yet, however, to show off its potential usefulness, I've put together a quick shell one-liner to get the number of issues assigned to me:
curl -u user:password http://SERVER/issues.xml?qAssignedTo=19 | xmlstarlet sel -t -v "count(//issue)"
Which when fed into conky, an ace Linux desktop text rendering app, leaves you with a widget that looks a bit like this:
Useless? yes. Limited? Of course. But if this divvy can use it, you won't have any trouble whatsoever.
It has been a while in the making, but I am glad to announce the beta release of fixx to the general public.
To the dismay of many of our followers, we have been rather tight-lipped about fixx until now. No doubt, I will be following up with a more detailed post on how fixx came to be, our product development process, the decisions made and lessons learned. For now, we have a sneak peek at the initial features in fixx version 1.0 and a public beta for those who prefer getting their hands dirty.
We are still looking for more beta testers and general feedback or comments are welcome in our people-powered customer forums.
Firstly, apologies if you have arrived here through your feed reader which has suddenly been flooded with every blog post made by hedgehog lab. We just deployed a massive re-design and re-code of our main website, which meant that a few things were bound to go awry. This should be fixed now, so please feel free to "Mark all as read" and move on.
Moving onto the good news, as you can see, we have taken on-board nearly a year's worth of feedback all our loyal customers have provided and spent some long sleepless nights to build and deploy our brand spanking new website. It's also a great opportunity for me to provide an update on our products and summarise our new website.
Website re-design and re-write
Most software companies are guilty of spending far too much time re-designing (lesser crime) and re-writing (greater crime) their website and internal tools every so often instead of focusing on, err, writing software for customers.
Lest you think we fell into this trap, our site re-design and re-write is actually in response to overwhelming customer feedback. Our previous site had a good enough design and a basic set of tools but there were constant complaints about both small details like font size, and big important details like issues with license generation and account management tools. We listened patiently for over a year and decided now was the right time to introduce an update. Here are some key points about this update,
One of the biggest overhaul has been in the visual/brand side of things. We have ditched our "far-too-corporate" look and adopted a visual style that we feel reflects our personality and ethics.
The product pages and content have been completely overhauled, giving a better experience when looking for information and making it easier to evaluate your options.
There is more information about hedgehog lab now, and more importantly, the much requested Team page and team information.
The license and account management section has been completely re-designed and re-written. It is now even quicker to buy and manage your product licenses from hedgehog lab.
We have a lot more exciting support-related changes and more content coming in the next few months, so make sure you keep an eye on the website.
fixx
This has been months in the making but fixx 1.9 is finally here and it brings with it a wealth of new features and updates which have been requested for a long while. Check out the Release Notes for more info and grab your copy. Here are a few big highlights from 1.9,
You can now delete projects you don't need completely from fixx.
The free user limit has been increased to 3 from 1. You can now have 3 valid users in the system without paying a penny!
fixx can now speak Spanish & German.
You can perform a 1-click migration from Unfuddle.
solomon
The past 2 months have been full steam ahead with solomon development. We have made massive progress with functionality (which included 2 re-writes of the contacts screen) but we are finally happy with the experience and UI. The beta is very close and although I don't want to give away a lot, expect a blog post and a sneak peek into both the solomon web and iPhone app soon.
One of our original aims of opening up a RESTful API for our bug tracking product fixx, was to encourage a healthy eco-system of third-party developers who can enhance and add to the functionality fixx brings and provide open integration points to third-party apps.
It has been great to see the overwhelming response from third-party developers who have spent their time and effort to enhance the fixx eco-system and we thought it would be the perfect time to thank everyone who has been working with the fixx API, providing feedback/criticism (which we always listen to and take on board), and generally writing some awesome add-ons. The following are just a few of them that we hope will be useful for those currently using fixx or considering using fixx in the future.
IDE Integration for Visual Studio and Eclipse
One of our customers, Martijn Laarman, has done a stellar job delivering a first version of Visual Studio Add-On for fixx. The project is pre-beta and is looking for people to try out the system and help him iron out bugs. There is also a project underway to bring IDE goodness to fixx in Eclipse.
Instant screenshots with Freshlog
Freshlog is a pretty nifty screen capture tool for the Mac that I personally use. It integrates with fixx and many other bug tracking tools, allowing you to capture and submit screenshots as new issues or comments to existing issues. It comes at an affordable price of $14.95 which is a bargain considering the plethora of tools and speed of updates it provides.
Source Control and more with XP-Dev.com
XP-Dev.com offers Enterprise Subversion hosting and has leveraged Subversion post-commit hooks to update fixx issues with commit messages. Even if you host your own Subversion repo, you can use a Ruby post-commit hook that allows you to do the same. Mercurial and Git hooks are also available.
These are just a few of the Add-Ons and integrations that third party developers and some of our customers have been working on. You can always find a more comprehensive list on our Add-Ons for fixx page and we would love to hear from you if you have been working on an add-on and would like it to be featured.
We're excited to announce public availability of the Hosted version of our bug tracking product, fixx. This has been the single biggest request we have consistently received over the past year, so we have heard you and acted on it!
Hosted fixx is a great and flexible way to get started with your own instance of fixx without having to set-up your own server and configure it. Despite how painless and easy it is to run your own instance of fixx, we know that many organisations love the ease of having someone else manage their software using a software as a service (SaaS) model. It is also a great way for organisations without IT staff to get started with fixx.
Unlike traditional on-demand/SaaS models, we have gone all out to give you the power of having your own dedicated hosted version of fixx that you have absolute control over. This means, you control when your software is upgraded and which features you want to turn on. We handle all the boring work like configuration, back-ups and upgrades.
fixx Hosted comes with absolutely no restrictions on functionality. You get every feature of the installable version, including unlimited users, projects and issues. Which other hosted bug tracker or project management tool offers that? The only thing that is limited is disk size for attachments but even that is generous with 20GB+ space, which is limitless for most common usage.
This is only the beginning for Hosted services from hedgehog lab. We hear you loud and clear on a hosted solomon and we are working hard on it. For now, we want to start slow and get feedback from our community on how we can improve our hosted offerings. Keep an eye out on our blog as we make constant improvements while delivering advanced functionality in our product roadmap.
Here at hedgehog lab, we love to tinker with our API's, mashing them with other services and technologies, however, as hard working chums always committed to the job, we rarely have the time to do such things.
This is why we love it when our customers play about with our API's and create some great services. Recently, Radosław Szalski created an awesome Git post-commit hook in python, using our API. The project is published up to Gist for anyone to use as they see fit.
Radosław had this to say:
"
Ever since I started using GIT and Fixx was searching for a way to even
further streamline my workflow. Unfortunately most of the hooks I've found
were only posting comments to issues. Why stop there, when Fixx's API has so
much more to offer ?
I love robustness and automation, so I created something that suited my
needs. I chose Python, because I wanted to learn it for a long time. The API
itself, thanks to RESTful architecture, is extremely easy to use.
As for the future, I am considering adding support for timelogs. That's the
only feature I am thinking of - I don't want to make it too complicated. As
I am actively learning the language, I will probably upgrade it with some of
the Pythonic goodness."
