Integration of Git (GUI) clients with Bug Tracking Tools:

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I. Preface

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This document is primarily intended for writers of various GUI clients for

Git. Clients such as TortoiseGit, TortoiseSVN, Subclipse, RapidSVN, PySVN and many

others.

The goal of this document is to outline a common technique for defining and then

integrating these GUI clients with third party bug tracking software.

II. Introduction

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It is very common in Software Development for changes to be related to a

specific bug or issue ID. Users of bug tracking systems would like to associate

the changes they make in Git with a specific ID in their bug tracking

system. There are already a number of people that have integrated these systems

with Git. They typically rely on the end user entering a log message on

their commits in some kind of a specific format that can be parsed with a

commit-hook or in some cases just on-the-fly in a web-based presentation of the

commit info. This option is OK, but it is not very user-friendly and it places

all of the integration within the bug tracking tool. When using a Git

client, you can see the log message info, but there is no way to jump to the bug

system.

Git (GUI) clients can help both the users and the bug tracking tools in

that task:

- When the user enters a log message, a well defined line including the issue

number associated with the commit can be added by the client automatically. This

reduces the risk that the users enters the issue number in a way the bug

tracking tools can't parse correctly and therefore won't know that the commit

was associated with a specific issue. The users won't have to remember the

format they have to use for each log message and each individual project - the

client will take care of that.

- When the user browses the log messages, there should be an easy way to fire up

the webbrowser to see the issue associated with that log message/commit.

III. Requirements

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To make the integration with bug tracking tools possible, a Git client

needs some information about the bug tracking tool used in a project. That

information should be available inside the working copy so that clients don't

have to access the repository over a possibly very slow connection to get that

information.

The information a client needs is:

- the URL pointing to the bug tracking tool

- the format of the issue number it has to add to the log messages so the

bug tracking tool can recognize it. Or

- a regular expression to parse the log message with to extract the issue number

There are other things a Git (GUI) client could use to make the

integration with bug tracking tools easier for the user, but these are

essential for the integration to work.

IV. Implementation

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The required information is stored in the .git/config file.

There are two different ways a client can integrate with an issue tracker. One

is very basic but provides the user with a separate GUI to enter bug ID's,

and the other one is based on regular expressions where the user has to enter

the bug ID's directly into the log message.

The following properties are defined which are used by both ways:

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name : bugtraq.url

value : (string)

This value is the URL pointing to the bug tracking tool. The URL string should

contain the substring "%BUGID%" which the client replaces with the issue number.

That way the resulting URL will point directly to the correct issue.

NOTE: The URL must be properly URI encoded by the user.

This URL can be used by clients to create a link to the bug tracking tool when

showing the logmessage of a revision.

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name : bugtraq.warnifnoissue

value : "true"/"yes" or "false"/"no"

If set to "true", then the clients will warn the user if the issue text box is

left empty. But it must _not_ block the commit, only give the user a chance to

enter an issue number in case (s)he forgot it.

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Properties used with the basic integration:

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name : bugtraq.label

value : (string)

This can be used by a client as a GUI label describing the text box where the

user has to enter the issue number. If this is not set, then a default value

should be used, e.g. "Bug-ID / Issue-Number :". Keep in mind though that most

GUI clients don't resize their windows according to the size of GUI elements. So

keep the size of the label string below 20-25 chars.

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name : bugtraq.message

value : (string)

If this property is set, then the client should show a text box in the commit

window where the user can enter an issue number.

The value string of this property is used by the client to create an additional

line added to the log message. The string must contain the substring "%BUGID%"

which is replaced with the issue number the user entered before applied to the

log message. The client will add the resulting string as a new line to the end

of the log message the user entered:

logmessage + "\n" + resultstring

In case bugtraq.append is set to "false", then the log message is defined as

resultstring + "\n" + logmessage

The client should make sure that the string doesn't have multiple lines.

If more than one issue number is entered by the user (separated by commas), the

client must make sure that there's no whitespace chars before and after the

comma. And also the whole issue number string must be trimmed.

Note: if the bugtraq.logregex property is set, then this property should be

ignored for parsing the log message but only be used to show the issue ID edit box.

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name : bugtraq.number

value : "true"/"yes" or "false"/"no"

If this property is set to "false", then the client allows any character entered

in the issue text box. Any other value or if the property is missing then only

numbers are allowed as the issue number. One exception is the ',' char, which is

used to separate multiple issues.

The client must never complain if the text box is left empty, i.e. if no issue

number is given. Not all commits are assigned to an issue!

Note: if the property bugtraq.logregex is set and this property is set to false,

then the client should use the regex against the created string which is added

to the log message to check if the bug ID is valid.

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name : bugtraq.append

value : "true"/"yes" or "false"/"no"

If set to "false", then the bugtraq.message part is inserted at the top of

the log message, if "yes" or not set, then it's appended to the log message at

the bottom.

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Properties used with the regex integration:

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name : bugtraq.logregex

value : (string)

This property contains one or two regular expressions, separated by a newline.

If only one expression is set, then the bare bug ID's must be matched in the

groups of the regex string. Example:

[Ii]ssue #?(\d+)

If two expressions are set, then the first expression is used to find a

string which relates to a bug ID but may contain more than just the bug ID

(e.g. "Issue #123" or "resolves issue 123").

The second expression is then used to extract the bare bug ID from the string

extracted with the first expression.

An example:

if you want to catch every pattern "issue #XXX" and "issue #890, #789" inside

a log message you could use the following regex strings:

[Ii]ssue #?(\d+)(,? ?#?(\d+))+

(\d+)

The property bugtraq.logregex will override bugtraq.number and bugtraq.message.

If both bugtraq.logregex and bugtraq.message are set, then bugtraq.message is

only used if the user enters an issue ID in the edit box of the commit window.

Both are used in the log window to find the URL's to point to the issuetracker.

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Please note:

- All property names and values must be properly UTF8 encoded. The client must

take care of that when setting the properties.