Development Tooling - Github Issues, ZenHub, GitLab and More

Please note that all opinions are that of the author.

I don’t know a single developer who isn’t at least moderately passionate about development tooling in terms of the ticketing system they use. Personally I’m micro rather than macro which reflects my passion for small teams (yep - I prefer a team you can feed with a pizza). When you’re at the micro level you don’t care about the overall macro view, you care about the basics - creating tickets, milestones and finding things. A few thoughts here:

• Do not ever try and use a list making tool like WunderList for software development. I’ve done it and it was god awful. At points I was close to paying for a real ticketing tool with my own money for the project. I love Chad Fowler’s work and I’m delighted as hell that Wunderlist got acquired and I really hope that Chad made out well personally. But you should never, ever use the same tool for software development workflow that you use for managing your grocery list with your spouse.
• The one thing that I did like about WunderList was that it had an app version which was my first encounter with an app that managed tasks and it was mildly enjoyable to NOT use a web form. It made entering tickets feel a bit like 1996 again which was kinda cool.
• LightHouseApp. I’ve used it for years and it is just ugly. Functional but ugly.
• Asana. I’m currently using this and it feels more like BaseCamp than software development
• Github Issues. I never, ever think about this one. But yesterday I had a new thing rear its head and I say “I know, I’ll use issues” and while it isn’t much, it is there and it really feels like software development. Recommended as long as you understand its limited.
• ZenHub. In a recent discussion of GitLab, I ran across ZenHub and this feels interesting to me. With the focus in the Rails community (and everywhere else) away from monolithic apps towards microservices with their own git repos, this sounds prescient: “ZenHub’s Task Boards support multiple repositories, making organization-wide collaboration seamless. Connecting multiple repos in one Board is easy: first, navigate to any ZenHub Board. Click Repositories, then click ‘Merge another repository’.” More…
• GitLab. I don’t know a ton here but the reviews are very, very positive. GitHub seems to be pretty beloved by the community and yet people are passionately arguing for this which really surprised me.
• Pivotal Tracker. What mention of issue tracking from a Rails person would be complete without mentioning this. Nope. Not for me. I take a firm stand against agile velocity metrics.