14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla has announced a new version of its bug-tracking system Bugzilla, which boasts many improvements over previous versions and lots of new features, many of which were requested by users. Bugzilla 3.4 is the first new release since March and it is the first major version to be launched since 3.2 came out in November.
“As you look through the New Features list of Bugzilla 3.4, you may notice that it fixes tons of major issues that Bugzilla has had since its beginning. For example, we fixed the biggest performance problem in Bugzilla – sending emails when a bug is updated – and we finally hide email addresses from logged out users, to prevent spam. And that's just a tiny taste of what's new,” Max Kanat-Alexander, one of the main developers of the Bugzilla Project, wrote.
The new version comes with a lot of new features, much more than previous releases, some of which have been a long time coming, like sending emails in the background, greatly improving the speed of bug editing, and the fact that emails are now hidden from logged-out users to reduce any potential spam problems. Other improvements and new features include a simplified page for bug submission, a new front page and a host of internal changes.
The great number of new features is due to the fact that the development team has mostly finished refactoring the code, which has been their main focus for the last five years. With much work finished the team had time to start working on new features and improvements, the first of which are starting to show up in 3.4.
Bugzilla's versioning system has two consecutive branches, much like the Linux kernel, where an odd-numbered version is a development branch while an even-numbered version is the stable branch. Bugzilla 3.4 is the fruition of the 3.3 line and is the first stable release since November 2008.
Bugzilla 3.4 is available for download here.