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About.xml
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About.xml
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<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8' ?>
<!DOCTYPE chapter PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN" "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd" [
<!ENTITY % BOOK_ENTITIES SYSTEM "Admin_Guide.ent">
%BOOK_ENTITIES;
]>
<chapter id="admin.about">
<title>About MantisBT</title>
<section id="admin.about.what">
<title>What is MantisBT?</title>
<para>
MantisBT is a web based bug tracking system that was first made
available to the public in November 2000. Over time it has matured
and gained a lot of popularity, and now it has become one of the most
popular open source bug/issue tracking systems. MantisBT is developed
in PHP, with support to multiple database backends including MySQL,
MS SQL, PostgreSQL and DB2.
</para>
<para>
MantisBT, as a PHP script, can run on any operating system that
is supported by PHP and has support for one of the DBMSes that
are supported. MantisBT is known to run fine on Windows, Linux,
OS/2, Mac OS X, System i and a variety of Unix operating systems.
</para>
</section>
<section id="admin.about.who">
<title>Who should read this manual?</title>
<para>
This manual is targeted for the person responsible for evaluating,
installing and maintaining MantisBT in a company. Typically we refer
to this person as the MantisBT administrator.
</para>
</section>
<section id="admin.about.license">
<title>License</title>
<para>
MantisBT is released under the terms of
<ulink url="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GNU General
Public License (GPL)</ulink>. MantisBT is free to use and modify.
It is free to redistribute as long as you abide by the distribution
terms of the <ulink url="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</ulink>.
</para>
</section>
<section id="admin.about.download">
<title>How to get it?</title>
<para>
MantisBT is available in several Linux distributions
including: Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, Frugalware and others.
Hence, if you are running Linux, start by checking if your distribution
has a package for MantisBT. If not, or if the package is
not up-to-date with the latest MantisBT version, then you may want
to download it directly from
<ulink url="http://www.mantisbt.org/download.php">here</ulink>.
</para>
<para>
For Windows, Mac OS X and other operating systems, use the link provided
above to download MantisBT. The download is compressed in tar.gz
or zip format. Both formats can be unpacked using tools like
<ulink url="http://www.7-zip.org/">7-Zip</ulink> (in case of Windows).
</para>
<para>
Note that at any point in time there are typically two "latest"
MantisBT releases that are available for download. The latest
production release (stable), and the latest development release
which can be an alpha or a release candidate. It is not recommended
to use development releases in production specially if it is still
in the alpha stage unless the administrator is familiar with PHP
and is able to troubleshoot and fix any issues that may arise.
</para>
</section>
<section id="admin.about.name">
<title>About the Name</title>
<para>
When initially seeking to name this project Ken ran into a
problem every programmer encounters. What is a good name? It has to
be descriptive, unique, and not too verbose. Additionally having
multiple meanings would be a nice touch. Quickly
ruled out were php*Something* names which, incidentally, although
popular, do not seem to be condoned by the PHP Group
developers. Drawing inspiration from Open Source projects like
Apache, Mozilla, Gnome, and so forth resulted in two eventual
choices: Dragonfly and Mantis. Dragonfly was already the name of a
webmail package. So the name became Mantis.
</para>
<para>
Praying Mantis are insects that feed primarily on other insects and bugs.
They are extremely desirable in agriculture as they devour insects that feed
on crops. They are also extremely elegant looking creatures. So, we
have a name that is fairly distinctive and descriptive in multiple
ways. The BT suffix stands for "Bug Tracker" and distinguishes
this project from general usage of the word Mantis. However, over
time the project was typically referred to as Mantis.
</para>
</section>
<section id="admin.about.history">
<title>History</title>
<para>
Kenzaburo Ito and a friend originally created a bug tracker
as an internal tool for their pet project. A search for good, free
packages came up with nothing suitable so they wrote their own.
After a rewrite and cleanup it was made available to the public via
the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL was chosen partly
because of his belief that development tools should be cheap or
free. In 2002, Ken was joined by Jeroen Latour, Victor Boctor and
Julian Fitzell to be the administrators and the core development
team of MantisBT. This marks a new era in MantisBT lifetime where it is
now a team project.
</para>
</section>
<section id="admin.about.support">
<title>Support</title>
<para>
There are plenty of resources to help answer support queries. Following
are the main ones:
</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
<ulink url="http://www.mantisbt.org/forums/">Forums</ulink> - The
forums are one of the most popular destinations for getting
MantisBT support. Start off by searching the forums for your
questions, if not found, then go ahead and submit a question.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<ulink url="http://www.mantisbt.org/mailinglists.php">Mailing lists</ulink> -
Several lists are available, each of them with its own,
specific purpose. Note that posting messages is restricted
to subscribers so you will have to register before you can
send messages; however, there are public archives available
if you're only interested in reading.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<ulink url="http://www.mantisbt.org/irc.php">IRC</ulink> -
The IRC channel is mainly used by developers to engage in
in-person discussion. There are many free IRC clients:
XChat (for Linux), <ulink url="http://hexchat.github.io/">HexChat</ulink>,
<ulink url="http://www.icechat.net/">IceChat</ulink> amongst others.
You can also use <ulink url="http://webchat.freenode.net/">Web Chat</ulink>
to connect to IRC via your web browser.
This may also useful when your work firewall blocks the IRC port.
Many people prefer to use IRC to ask questions to the developers and other
users who are in the IRC channel.
The IRC channel logs are archived and made
<ulink url="http://www.mantisbt.org/irclogs.php">
available on the MantisBT web site</ulink>.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<ulink url="http://www.mantisbt.org">Wiki</ulink> - The
MantisBT Wiki has information related to "How To (recipes)",
FAQ, feature requirements, etc.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Search - A good way for locating an answer for your question
or finding more information about a topic is to search across
all MantisBT website and the Internet via your favorite
search engine, e.g.
<ulink url="http://www.google.com">Google</ulink> or
<ulink url="http://www.bing.com">Bing</ulink>.
</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>
It is important to note that support questions should not be sent
directly to MantisBT developers or through the MantisBT contact us
pages.
</para>
<para>
Also, our <ulink url="http://mantisbt.org/bugs/">bug tracker</ulink>
is reserved for reporting issues with the software, and must not be
used for support requests.
</para>
</section>
<section id="admin.about.news">
<title>MantisBT News</title>
<para>
There are several ways to keep up to date with MantisBT news. These
include:
</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
The <ulink url="mailto:mantisbt-announce@lists.sourceforge.net">
mantisbt-announce mailing list</ulink>
is a very low traffic
list that is used for major announcements, typically
about new releases. All MantisBT users are
encouraged to subscribe to this mailing list. The
average traffic should be no more than one to two posts
per month.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<ulink url="http://www.mantisbt.org/blog/">MantisBT Blog</ulink>
is used to communicate announcements about new releases, topics
relating to MantisBT, etc. Users are encouraged to subscribe to
the RSS feed to know when new posts are posted there.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<ulink url="http://twitter.com/mantisbt">Twitter</ulink> is used to
notify users about up-to-date details about what is happening with MantisBT development.
For example, a Twitter update is automatically posted by the official bug tracker
whenever an issue is resolved. Twitter users are encouraged to follow "mantisbt".
</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</section>
<section id="admin.about.versioning">
<title>Versioning</title>
<para>
Our release numbering convention follows the guidelines of
<ulink url="http://semver.org/">Semantic Versioning</ulink>.
Given a version number <emphasis>Major.Minor.Patch</emphasis>
and an optional <emphasis>Suffix</emphasis> (eg. 1.2.0rc1):
</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
Major - Indicates a very large change in the core package.
Rewrites or major milestones.
API changes which are not backwards-compatible.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Minor - Introduction of new features or significant changes
in functionality, in a backwards-compatible manner.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Patch - Bug fixes, maintenance and security releases.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Suffix - Optional, indicates a development release.
a1 for alpha 1, b1 for beta 1, rc1 for first release candidate, etc.
Absence of suffix indicates a stable release.
</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</section>
</chapter>