Redmine

Hello!

I have been preparing a system to test the viability of Redmine as a replacement for our TRAC system. So far, Redmine has proven to be far superior as a product. The only concern that I have is that I need to find a way to integrate the Redmine system with our AccuRev VCS. I am finding it difficult to find the information that I need to add the necessary functionality to Redmine, which could be a show stopper for the project, and was surprisingly very easy to do for TRAC!

The situation is that AccuRev is configured to promote changes up through a hierarchical stream structure, and uses its own built in issue tracking system to organise changes into promotable change packages with all of the changes grouped by their respective issues. The solution under TRAC was to create a plug-in which tapped into events that occurred after issue changes were saved. This has allowed all of the issue management responsibilities to be handled by the Issue Tracker, and allows developers to largely ignore the VCS except for necessary check-ins every now and then, which is ideal, because the AccuRev issue tracker is a real dog to configure and use! ;-)

My problem is two-fold. First and foremost, I have no idea about how to go about writing an application in Ruby. But, aside from a learning curve, I feel confident enough to get over that hurdle. Unfortunately all that does at present in confuse things when I attempt to make head or tail of the source code for Redmine. The second problem is even more basic... I have no idea where to start in order to write a plug-in that requires no user interface, and only needs to respond to a "post save event" and extract issue change information in Redmine. I can see how to automatically generate empty plugins, but I'm not sure what I need to do in order to extend the plug-in in such a way that I can then use it in the manner I intend.

It's been very frustrating, due understandably to the fact that Redmine is such a new product that it appears the sort of documentation I would need doesn't seem to exist, and crawling through source code is starting to prove a little counter-productive. I've been hoping to appeal to the "vanity" of a few of you plug-in guru's out there, and hoping you'll give me a gentle nudge in the right direction! :-)

I'm really keen to resolve this one, and more than happy to provide a finished solution and my notes to anyone else who might be interested in a similar solution.

Thanks for reading!

Sean Robins
Dynamic Hearing