Nice free bug tracking solution

For years, my bug tracking "system" consisted of scattered text files. I've tried importing those documents into various notebook/outlining apps and although things feel somewhat more organized when everything's in "one place" it's still pretty much just a bunch of text files. Every once and a while I'd go hunting for a real project/bug tracking solution and what I've found was either too limited or too complicated - until recently...

I came across Redmine a little while back and was really impressed with the clean interface and the fact that you can strip down and customize the feature set. All I need is a simple issue tracker and maybe a wiki to keep notes, and Redmine looked perfect. However, I dreaded the thought of messing around with Ruby, Apache, and the bowels of Mac OS X only to have things go screwy after some system update. I've used MAMP for years to facilitate local web development so I knew it was possible to run web apps in safe cocoons - I just needed a package that supported Ruby on Rails to get Redmine going, but what I stumbled across next was even better.

Enter BitNami. These guys produce self-contained "stacks" that install and configure popular open-sourced web apps including (you guessed it) Redmine. BitNami's Mac OS X stacks aren't as refined as lliving-e's MAMP but installation was fairly painless and the included shell script used to start and stop the servers is easily automated. I should also note that the Redmine stack includes Subversion, which is something I'd really like start using one day for my REALbasic projects. Unfortunately REALbasic's version control support doesn't really mesh with my workflow (lots of shared externals) but this is a topic for another day.

The second piece of this puzzle is a great free app called Fluid. It creates site-specifc web browsers bundled up into packages that work like a normal Mac OS X application (a feature Apple has stolen for Snow Leopard). After a bit of tweaking in Fluid I had Redmine in my dock and ready to go.

So there you have it - free, robust, local bug tracking on Mac OS X. The only difficult part is finding an nice icon for the Fluid applet!