Feature Request: Stand Alone WI-Client Support

Submitted by craig on 2016-02-19

I would like to be able to work on issues (a local repository copy) when there is no internet connection, and sync my local work back up to the "server" when there is an internet connection. This makes the client more of a peer than a client/slave.

The problem this solves is being able to keep working with WI when there is no network connection, the network connection is bad, or the network connection is untrusted. Examples; On an airplane, at a conference, when the connection is saturated with someone's torrent activity (college dorm), or the network connection is very expensive.

Think along the lines of how GIT does version control. There is a local repository on the local disk where work is kept, all GIT features are supported, and a server (or two or three) where work is pushed (or Sync'ed) at convenient times.

When I saw WI had a client, I was desperately hoping this kind of feature would differentiate WI from the rest of the pack. I discovered the WI Windows Client is heavily dependent on a connection to the "Server" and won't work without this connection. i.e. I don't see much value over just using the Web interface, like every other bug tracking system in existence today. I installed WI, like what I see, and wish it could do more.

Hopefully the installation of such a Standalone client will will be as lightweight and easy as installing GIT. i.e. I'd rather not clone my server on my laptop with Apache/IIS, MySQL, etc.

I hope you'll consider my request.

Thank you,
Craig A.

That's true, the desktop client requires a constant connection to the server in order to work. I once thought about implementing such offline mode, but that would require a significant amount of work. There are lots of potential problems - resolving conflicting changes, for example - so I decided not to do it.

Regards,
Michał

I recently returned from a trip to China where Internet access outside of China is quite bad.  Bad means 80K/Second on a "good" day, slower than modem speeds.  It gets worse hour-by-hour through the day to the point of not working at all.  So this ends up being a Good News/Bad News thing.

Good News - Web Issues doesn't require a lot of bandwidth, so the web interface almost always works surprisingly well under these horrific conditions.

Bad News - There are times when a connection can't be established, this is when "off-line" would really be nice

I suspect "a significant amount of work" hasn't changed.  ;)  I have some ideas about how to reconcile the data, but it's always easier for the guy who doesn't have to do the work.

Either way, I'm happy with what I have.  Web Issues is a wonderful tool for Issue tracking.  I sent you a small amount of money since it ends up I am recently using Web Issues more.  I based the amount on another program I use, like yours-is really well done, and I enjoy; TNG  Thank you.

Thank you, I appreciate that very much.

By the way, I'm currently working on version 2.0 of WebIssues and not very far from releasing it. It will have a JavaScript front-end communicating with a REST API, so it will use even less bandwidth than the current web client.

Regards,
Michał

Cool, that should make an already fast system even faster, more reliable.

Is there a "Roadmap" posting so I can read about any new features?  Or is this 2.0 functionally the same as 1.x, but with a whole new improved AJAX/SOAP/REST infrastructure under the hood?

"Big" Things I'm interested in (Big as in probably a lot of effort, just sharing, so I won't hold my breath)

  1. Standalone "Client" [Win10, Linux, Mac] (no network connection with Client Issue re-sync upon reconnection to WebIssues Server)
  2. Git integration to link Issue Tracking with a specific Git check-in (click the link to see specific Checked-In version sort of functionality)
  3. SVN integration to link Issue Tracking with a specific SVN check-in (click the link to see specific Checked-In version sort of functionality)


I use Git for C/C++ and VHDL software development
I use SVN for Schematic capture/PCB Layout (the CAD package I use supports SVN, not Git, otherwise I try to use Git)

Other than this list, I'll be happy to look at 2.0 when it's ready for release!  Whatever you did with 1.x made the transition from PHP 5.x to 7.x painless.  I was really pleased while a number of other PHP things broke!

Yeah, so far the functionality will be more or less the same as 1.x, I'm just rewriting everything using new technologies. It's hard to say where it goes next, but Git and SVN integration is something that might be useful to me as well. I will consider it as soon as I have some time to work on it.

Regards,
Michał