Integrating TortoiseSVN with Bugzilla

My project uses Subversion for version control, and TortoiseSVN as our subversion control client. A very good version control implementation on both fronts.

We also use Bugzilla as our issue tracking tool. The below can also apply to other Issue Trackers, but you will need to do a bit more of the work.

Now I recently found out that you can easily integrate TortoiseSVN with Bugzilla. Linking in this way adds the following benefits:

• Prompts the user for an Issue reference when committing changes 
• Records the change against that issue, allowing an indexed search for all changes relating to a given Issue
• Display the Issue reference in the log message - with a clickable URL directly to that Issue

All of this can be enabled simply by setting the relevant bugtraq SVN properties on the top-level folder. For example I set the properties on the root of my development area, but for a project-wide adoption you can set these properties on trunk.

Here are the bugtraq properties I am currently using:

Simple as that!

Note: We use the term OR (Obersvation Report) in place of Issue in my current project.

Now I can understand those that say this doesn't add a great deal of additional features. Which is true *gasp*. But! It took me 2 minutes to do. For so little effort any benefit is worthwhile, and I definitely think there are benefits.

For more detail on how the available bugtraq properties work, check the official docs. Which are quite clear!