Task management is not an easy thing. For software projects, it can get extreme. We don't really have a big programming dept here at EverythingHQ, but there is still enough noise around to need a plan.
We are using Eclipse as a development IDE, and Mantis as our issue tracking tool. Both tools are far from perfect, but they do help us get the job done. Today, I made them a little nicer by linking the two together.
Mantis and Eclipse are connected by using a pretty handy Eclipse plugin called Mylyn (http://www.eclipse.org/mylyn/). Mylyn is a pretty handy task management tool on it's own, but being able to connect it with Mantis is exciting (for a geek).
To do the connecting you need to install a slightly older version of mylyn, as of this moment, Mantis seems to work with 3.02. Download this from the Mylyn pages (http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/tools/mylyn/update-archive/3.0.2/v20080918-1100/mylyn-3.0.2.v20080918-1100-e3.4.zip&r=1), extract it, and then install. (You will need to add a new local repository location - I was confused a while.)
Once this version of Mylyn is installed, you can install the mantis connector. (http://mylyn-mantis.wiki.sourceforge.net/).
With these pieces in place, you can now connect the Eclipse to your issue tracker.
First you need to set up a saved filter on Mantis. At the moment these seem to have to be public, and work on all projects (but you can make the filter do whatever you want it to). Once you have saved a filter via the Mantis web interface, you can create a new "Task Query" from eclipse.
When you create the new query, you will need to create a new Repository. This is pretty easy, just select the appropriate version from the label field, and your server url will be pre-populated with a template url. With your repository in place, you can define your task query and link it to a mantis filter. A few minutes later, you'll be able to open a new Tasks window, and all your issues are magically part of your IDE.
Then you can start to discover all the funky extras you get with Mylyn.
