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I have recently joined a new company and I am dragging them by the scruff of their neck into the 21st Century when it comes to development and testing processes.

I have just introduced JIRA after battling with the damn awful TFS tracker they were using.

My next step is automated building, via CruiseControl.net but that's a side story which only bare some help to what I need advice on here.

Anyway, so to my question.

I am looking for a solution to informing the test team which 'version/build' a bug/issue/task was fixed/completed on. Back in their old TFS days they had a free type textbox for this, and they would manually update a config setting with the latest 'version' number that they had put in the bug tracker.

Now be default JIRA's versioning is more advanced (and rightly so) and you need a new version entry creating to achieve this, which I am not prepared to let happen as it will only end in tears and a whole world of pain.

Without a build server and automated building of projects we have disjointed build numbers, as currently the projects are built on our local machines and deployed to staging (by the developers) which isn't an ideal situation, but that's what I have to work with for now.

I could add a free type text field to the issue objects in jira, which we could use to enter a build number or low end version number, which would work fine, except the build numbers would be disjointed between machines. So some arbitrary manual version numbers would have to suffice instead.

Has anyone got any better ideas on what could be done to fix this problem?

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  • Is there a reason you don't want to fix the "disjointed build number" problem first, and use more team-wide build number that has real meaning?
    – Joe Strazzere
    Commented Oct 24, 2013 at 14:59
  • we would need a build server to achieve this to some extent. also when building locally your build number increments independent of other machines?
    – JamesStuddart
    Commented Oct 24, 2013 at 15:07
  • A build server is the best way. Manually setting the build number to match some centrally agreed-upon value would work as well.
    – Joe Strazzere
    Commented Oct 24, 2013 at 15:20
  • Yes I know that is the best way... I said that in the post. But at this moment in time thats not a possible option
    – JamesStuddart
    Commented Oct 24, 2013 at 15:46
  • I think Joe is still right. Your other options wouldn't be any better or less expensive than just setting up a build server. It's pretty simple to do these days and there are plenty of free options.
    – Sam Woods
    Commented Oct 24, 2013 at 18:51

1 Answer 1

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Sounds like a pretty awful situation. Below is my suggestions,

  1. First is the suggestion you gave,
  2. Secondly you could add a label field and that way at least your users get some autocomplete functionality that might alleviate some of the pain
  3. Thirdly you could add a multi-select, whereby you could always add version numbers and manage that yourself.
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  • Yeah it's not the most ideal situation, but its one of the things I was brought in to sort out, but 'slowly slowly catchy monkey'. I think a free type text box of some sort against the issues, is going to have to be the way to go. It makes me cry a little but needs must. After this it'll be continuous integration and beating them into working and testing more effectively. Nothing better than a challenge :)
    – JamesStuddart
    Commented Oct 28, 2013 at 8:55

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