Improving the issue tracker for larger projects

By Jason Robbins, Google Code

When we created the issue tracker for Project hosting on Google Code our goal was to keep things simple. We had found that most issue trackers include too many fields and options that aren't applicable to a given issue. As a result, we intentionally did not implement issue relationships like is-blocked-on and is-duplicate-of. For most of the projects that we host, simply adding a comment that mentions the other issue is enough information to get the job done.

Now we host more large projects, and some projects that started small with us have grown large. So, starting today, we are offering a formal 'Blocked on' field. And, when you close an issue as 'Duplicate', you can merge it into the original issue. For more information, take a look at our issue tracker documentation.

For projects that regularly triage issues, you can now pick where to go after you have finished updating an issue.

We hope that these changes help make the issue tracker as easy to use on larger projects as it is for smaller ones.

As always, we look forward to your feedback.