I’m currently paying a moderate amount to atlassian to host jira for me, and I’m looking for a FOSS way to replace it. I don’t use it every month and I’ve decided it’s not worth continuing to pay, plus I want to transition to FOSS wherever I can. I just feel trapped. I’m sure people here know the feeling when using proprietary stuff.
I’ve used hosted bugzilla before, and possibly I didn’t know enough about how to make it work, but the web frontend they had was garbage, it was unintuitive and took forever to respond, and I just transitioned to jira because it was easier to use.
I’m happy to self-host for now and maybe pay for hosting if I want to collaborate in the future. I have a Ubuntu server at home with miles of headroom to run a webserver.
I would love to hear anyone’s opinions here. Also any other relevant lemmy subs would be very welcome.
Edit: some good questions about my requirements. I’m doing software development on personal projects using git, and I’m tracking issues using jira. I’m also developing hardware, which means 3d print files, CNC files and possibly gerbers for PCBs. All this can be tracked via git, so actually having an in-house way to host all that would be great too.
So I need an issue tracker that syncs with git, essentially.
I have also been using jira to kind of ad-hoc document any research involved in these things, but it’s not great because to find any of that documentation I need to dig into my closed issues. I’d like a documentation system that can handle diagrams, drawings and stuff like that, and if this could double as a general note-taking solution I’d love that too, because I’ve been trying to replace trello/onenote for that.
EDIT 2: Thanks for all the replies. I plan to investigate all the suggestions, my health has just been really bad since I posted this, but I always try to update anyone who offers help.
It depends what you were using Jira for - it has a lot of features, most of which you were probably not using.
Trac has a wiki, tickets and git all in one - https://trac.edgewall.org
NextCloud has a plugin called ‘Tasks’ which looks similar to Trello.
Forgejo is similar to github - https://forgejo.org/
Nextcloud deck is the Trello like thing
I have also looked at weken and taiga
Nextcloud Deck has an app as well that is on F-Droid.
Oh good question. I’m using it for personal software development, tracking new features, bugs and documenting my research.
I mostly use the kanban board view. I’ve wanted to add Confluence documentation pages but didn’t want to pay.
I’ll also be developing hardware soon.
Okay, I wasn’t able to review your links before so I just focussed on answering your question.
Trac looks the most promising of everything I’ve seen so far, I like that it’s minimal and also does basically everything I’m looking for in one place. I’ll give it a try first.
Thanks so much!
I don’t think trac has any kind of kanban UI to it, btw. They might have added it by now, it’s been years since I used it.
Okay, thanks for the heads up.
A quick search found this: https://trac-hacks.org/wiki/TracKanbanBoardMacro
Looks like there are others too, I’ll play around and see what works for me.
Trac was great years ago. As much as I know, they were stuck on Python 2 until the very last moment 3 years ago, so it became almost unusable, and the UI is not responsive even today, not usable on phone. It used to be really great, but be careful relying on it before doing research on its current development.
Okay, maybe it won’t be my first port of call then.
After checking out more options, I think forgejo looks like a good place to start.
A solid choice. I’ve been using it daily ( codeberg.org ) for the last year and it’s pretty great!
The code review features are not as awesome as github but you won’t need those.
Consider using https://www.fossil-scm.org/
Although I understand if you don’t wish to stop using git.
Thanks, yes, I’d far rather stick with a familiar and ubiquitous system unless I see a reason to switch. Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll keep it in mind.
I host my own gitlab-ce instance in docker which works well. I mainly needed a web UI for git and I track issues with it. I think there are boards or at least free plugins for the community version, but I do not use them. You can version your documentation in .md files too. Not sure if it can substitute Jira for you, but you mentioned Bugzilla and I like gitlab a lot more.
Just make sure to update the container regularly, you can’t make big version jumps without the intermediate updates.
I think you can combine it with OpenProject if you need more project planning.
Okay, I’m looking into that, thanks. The open-core model is a little concerning for me - one of the things I hate about the proprietary stuff is all the gatekeeping you have to deal with, but if the other possibilities don’t pan out I’ll consider it.
The community edition is open source, the Enterprise edition is not.
Oh, yeah, I meant open-core, not closed-core, but I’m still leery of software where they close off portions to make you want to pay. It gives them an incentive to make the open part of it worse.
For technical notes, I’d recommend Sphinx docs or single reStructuredText files on a cloud storage or repository. You can create all kind of formats (PDF, HMTL, ect.) from it, and it’s future proof.
I need an issue tracker that syncs with git, essentially.
Gitea + Redmine
If you need CI/CD, then Gitlab CE is an option… but it’s on the heavier side, not worth it if you don’t need it.
OpenProject is an eye-candy fork of Redmine. Unfortunately it has lost plugin and 3rd party app compatibility, and Redmine’s simple interface is still less buggy.
document any research […] diagrams […] general note-taking
Joplin + Syncthing, Zim Wiki + git, draw.io
Other nice tools: FreePlane, Jupiter notebooks, any markdown editor
On CI/CD, woodpecker is fairly trivial to set up to work with gitea/forgejo if something like that is needed
You should check out the app directory at Selfh.st. There are a bunch of selfhosted solutions for what you’re looking for, be they all in one or micro services.
After looking at that list, I think forgejo or gitea are what I’m looking for. I would prefer to stick with software as open as possible, so forgejo looks like where I’ll start. I love that they’re involved in federation and have a collective governance structure.
