Re: My Little Rant Below

One of the great things about open-source software is that you can take ownership of it and make it your own.

Mel Chua, a recent intern at The Open Planning Project, saw my rant below -- while also hearing me speak of it in the office -- and took it upon herself to do something about it. During a presentation last week on "How to write Trac plugins," she gave me and fellow coworkers a great introduction, smoothly following it up with a demonstration of a working trackback plugin. (No lie!)

I was estatic.

Through collaboration with Mel, Douglas Mayle and Joshua Bronson at The Open Planning Project, we've come up with a first implementation of  "tracbacks" within Trac (notice the missing 'k'). In fact, Mel wrote up a great description here.

Along with the Tracbacks plugin, I used Mel's tutilage and help from the #trac channel on Freenode to create what I'm calling "Trashtalk." Trashtalk is, in a sense, the external version of the Tracbacks plugin, where it (enter: slogan) "records incoming links -- url's that link to each ticket -- in order to gauge each ticket's effect on the community." Ever want to know who's talking about your bugs? Well now you can with Trashtalk.

It's in its early stages now, and there's still more coolness to inject into it, but -- thanks to Mel's initial contribution -- I get the feeling TOPP and TOPP'ers alike will feel more empowered to change their (bug reporting) environments for the better.

PS: A more in-depth showcase of both plugins may be on the horizon. You probably want screenshots. If I were you, I'd want screenshots.