Mantis is a tool for tracing software bug before releasing. Every one can utilize Mantis without making payment. Not only bug tracking, but also supports release features to manage diverse releases of a project or a software. The Logo of this tool represents Mantidae insect family. The initialization of mantis in 2000 by Kenzaburo Ito, then joined other members with his first version of mantis is 1.0.0. Stable release of this tool is 2.23.0 in December 10 2019 (this release includes a schema change.). This issue tracker is built on PHP and supports Linux, MacOs ,Windows and a variety of Unix Operating Systems on server side. The bug tracker is compatible with Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera and IE10 +. MantisBT supports multiple backend databases including MySQL, MS SQL and PostgreSQL.

Key notes for mantis

• Email notifications: Provides current status of bugs to stakeholders
• Access Control: You can manage the accessibility of user at project level
• Customize: Based on user needs, we can personalize Mantis
• Mobile Support: MantisBT uphold iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone Areas
• Plugins: More than 100 add-ins to connect with different softwares to make the work easy

MantisBT has many credential methods some are

1. Standard Authentication: The MantisBT users are validate based on database records. By using hash format password is kept.
2. LDAP and Microsoft Active Directory : After entering username and password check from the directory it is valid then automatically creating a user account.
3. Basic Authentication: Check whether the user is already existed or not. If not, create account automatically.

Some of the issues related to Mantis Issue Tracker

1. The layout is table based and hardcoded style
2. The interface is a bit slow
3. The customizations are available only through config files
4. It is less supportive for Agile Development which companies are following nowadays
5. The development cycles are long and the administration process is also a bit complicated
6. Customizations at “Issue View” levels are not present

Author: STEPS