November 23, 2018
Jira manual update process is ugly and does not have any alternative
I've recently bought a Jira license in order to have my own bugtracker for projects I do. For my projects I personally like to use classical bugtracking, which cannot be fully replaced by something like Trello.
When the time came to update Jira version, the quick check shown that there's no way to update Jira in any automatic way. Administrator must each time go to web site, choose OS version, start download, abort it, copy link from Downloads and wget- or curl- it on server. Then manually unpack it and play with symlinks (or some other way to gracefully abort upgrade if one prefers).
Seems like in this case Atlassian has some business requirements that override product usability. This is first sign that the product design is drawn by primarily interests of non-tech people in Atlassian. As long as Jira product is sold to support the technical process and make it cheaper, this decision to make update process unstable (as it needs special attention), this ruins my trust in product and company in general. To understand the scale of this decision just imagine that for example 10 different products on your servers need manual update process. This is at least annoying and bug-prone because involves human factor. So from my point of view this is a clear sign that (1) either company generates enough money to let marketing people make shitty decisions and override technical ones and not to think about competitors or (2) company's left hand does not know (and care) about right one. Any of which is very bad from the client point of view. Any good alternatives for a bugtracker?
When the time came to update Jira version, the quick check shown that there's no way to update Jira in any automatic way. Administrator must each time go to web site, choose OS version, start download, abort it, copy link from Downloads and wget- or curl- it on server. Then manually unpack it and play with symlinks (or some other way to gracefully abort upgrade if one prefers).
Seems like in this case Atlassian has some business requirements that override product usability. This is first sign that the product design is drawn by primarily interests of non-tech people in Atlassian. As long as Jira product is sold to support the technical process and make it cheaper, this decision to make update process unstable (as it needs special attention), this ruins my trust in product and company in general. To understand the scale of this decision just imagine that for example 10 different products on your servers need manual update process. This is at least annoying and bug-prone because involves human factor. So from my point of view this is a clear sign that (1) either company generates enough money to let marketing people make shitty decisions and override technical ones and not to think about competitors or (2) company's left hand does not know (and care) about right one. Any of which is very bad from the client point of view. Any good alternatives for a bugtracker?
Labels: autoupdate, bugtracker, bugtracking, jira, linux, manual, no-autoupdate, shit, upgrade
