<chapter id="admin.about">
    <title>About MantisBT</title>

    <section id="admin.about.what">
        <title>What is MantisBT?</title>

        <para>
            MantisBT is a web based bug tracking system that was first made
            available to the public in November 2000.  Over time it has matured
            and gained a lot of popularity, and now it has become one of the most
            popular open source bug/issue tracking systems.  MantisBT is developed
            in PHP, with support to multiple database backends including MySQL,
            MS SQL, PostgreSQL and DB2.
        </para>

        <para>
            MantisBT, as a PHP script, can run on any operating system that
            is supported by PHP and has support for one of the DBMSes that
            are supported.  MantisBT is known to run fine on Windows, Linux,
            OS/2, Mac OS X, System i and a variety of Unix operating systems.
        </para>
    </section>

    <section id="admin.about.who">
        <title>Who should read this manual?</title>

        <para>
            This manual is targeted for the person responsible for evaluating,
            installing and maintaing MantisBT in a company. Typically we refer
            to this person as the MantisBT administrator.
        </para>
    </section>

    <section id="admin.about.license">
        <title>License</title>

        <para>
            MantisBT is released under the terms of
            <ulink url="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GNU General
            Public License (GPL)</ulink>.  MantisBT is free to use and modify.
            It is free to redistribute as long as you abide by the distribution
            terms of the <ulink url="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</ulink>.
        </para>
    </section>

    <section id="admin.about.requirments">
        <title>Minimum Requirements</title>

        <para>
            MantisBT has modest software and hardware requirements.
            It requires a computer that is able to run the server software.  All of the required
            software is free for commercial or non-commercial use.  The
            server can be a shared public web server or a dedicated co-located box.
            The disk space required will depend on the size of the database,
            however, it is typically driven by the expected number and size of
            the attachments.
        </para>

        <itemizedlist>
            <listitem>
                <para>
                    Operating System: MantisBT runs on Windows, MacOS, OS/2, Linux, Solaris, the
                    BSDs, and just about anything that supports the required server software.
                </para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>
                    Web Server: MantisBT is mainly tested with
                    <ulink url="http://www.microsoft.com/iis">Microsoft IIS</ulink> and
                    <ulink url="http://www.apache.org/">Apache</ulink>.  However,
                    it is expected to work with any decent web server software.
                </para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>
                    <ulink url="http://www.php.net/">PHP</ulink>: The web server
                    must have PHP installed on it.  It can be installed as CGI or
                    whatever other integration technology that is supported by PHP
                    and the web server.  Required version is PHP 5.1.x or higher.
                    Recommended version is PHP 5.2.x.
                </para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>
                    Database: MantisBT requires a database to store its data.
                    The supported DBMSes include MySQL (4.1.x or higher), MS SQL,
                    PostgreSQL and DB2.
                </para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>
                    Browser: MantisBT aims to support most of the browsers in
                    the market.  The mainly supported ones are Internet Explorer and
                    Firefox.  However, browsers like Safari, Chrome and Opera should
                    also work fine although they are not used by most developers during
                    development and testing.
                </para>
             </listitem>
        </itemizedList>
    </section>

    <section id="admin.about.download">
        <title>How to get it?</title>

        <para>
            MantisBT is available in several Linux distributions
            including: Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, Frugalware and others.
            Hence, if you are running Linux, start by checking if your distribution
            has a package for MantisBT.  If not, or if the package is
            not up-to-date with the latest MantisBT version, then you may want
            to download it directly from
            <ulink url="http://www.mantisbt.org/download.php">here</ulink>.
        </para>

        <para>
            For Windows, Mac OS X and other operating systems, use the link provided
            above to download MantisBT.  The download is compressed in tar.gz
            or zip format.  Both formats can be unpacked using tools like
            <ulink url="http://www.7-zip.org/">7-Zip</ulink> (in case of Windows).
        </para>


        <para>
            Note that at any point in time there are typically two "latest"
            MantisBT releases that are available for download.  The latest
            production release (stable), and the latest development release
            which can be an alpha or a release candidate.  It is not recommended
            to use development releases in production specially if it is still
            in the alpha stage unless the administrator is familiar with PHP
            and is able to troubleshoot and fix any issues that may arise.
        </para>
    </section>

    <section id="admin.about.name">
        <title>About the Name</title>

        <para>
            When initially seeking to name this project Ken ran into a
            problem every programmer encounters. What is a good name?  It has to
            be descriptive, unique, and not too verbose.  Additionally having
            multiple meanings would be a nice touch.  Quickly
            ruled out were php*Something* names which, incidentally, although
            popular, do not seem to be condoned by the PHP Group
            developers.  Drawing inspiration from Open Source projects like
            Apache, Mozilla, Gnome, and so forth resulted in two eventual
            choices: Dragonfly and Mantis. Dragonfly was already the name of a
            webmail package. So the name became Mantis.
        </para>

        <para>
            Praying Mantis are insects that feed primarily on other insects and bugs.
            They are extremely desirable in agriculture as they devour insects that feed
            on crops. They are also extremely elegant looking creatures.  So, we
            have a name that is fairly distinctive and descriptive in multiple
            ways.  The BT suffix stands for "Bug Tracker" and distinguishes
            this project from general usage of the word Mantis.  However, over
            time the project was typically referred to as Mantis.
        </para>
    </section>

    <section id="admin.about.history">
        <title>History</title>

        <para>
            Kenzaburo Ito and a friend originally created a bug tracker
            as an internal tool for their pet project. A search for good, free
            packages came up with nothing suitable so they wrote their own.
            After a rewrite and cleanup it was made available to the public via
            the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL was chosen partly
            because of his belief that development tools should be cheap or
            free. In 2002, Ken was joined by Jeroen Latour, Victor Boctor and
            Julian Fitzell to be the administrators and the core development
            team of MantisBT. This marks a new era in MantisBT lifetime where it is
            now a team project.
        </para>
    </section>

    <section id="admin.about.support">
        <title>Support</title>

        <para>
            There are plenty of resources to help answer support queries.  Following
            are the main ones:
        </para>

        <itemizedlist>
            <listitem>
                <para>
                    <ulink url="http://www.mantisbt.org/forums/">Forums</ulink> - The
                    forums are one of the most popular destinations for getting
                    MantisBT support.  Start off by searching the forums for your
                    questions, if not found, then go ahead and submit a question.
                </para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>
                    <ulink url="http://www.mantisbt.org/mailinglists.php">Mailing lists</ulink> -
                    Available mailing lists are "mantisbt-announce"
                    for announcements, "mantisbt-dev" for development issues,
                    mantisbt-lang for localization and "mantisbt-help" for
                    general help/support questions.  There are public archives for such
                    mailing lists.  Note that only members of the mailing lists can
                    post to them, hence, subscribe to the lists before you attempt
                    to email them.
                </para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>
                    <ulink url="http://www.mantisbt.org/irc.php">IRC</ulink> -
                    The IRC channel is mainly used by developers to engage in
                    in-person discussion.  The recommended tool for IRC is XChat (for Linux),
                    XChat 2 (for Windows).  However, you can also use <ulink
                    url="http://webchat.freenode.net/">Web Chat</ulink> to connect to IRC
                    via your web browser.  This is also useful when your work
                    firewall blocks the IRC port (although there are other
                    workarounds involving tunneling to fix this issue).  Many people
                    prefer to use IRC to ask questions to the developers and other
                    users who are in the IRC channel.  The IRC channel logs are archived
                    and made available on the web. (TODO: add irc logs link)
                </para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>
                    <ulink url="http://www.mantisbt.org">Wiki</ulink> - The
                    MantisBT Wiki has information related to "How To (recipes)",
                    FAQ, feature requirements, etc.
                </para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>
                    Search - A good way for locating an answer for your question
                    or finding more information about a topic is to search across
                    all MantisBT website and the Internet via
                    <ulink url="http://www.google.com">Google</ulink> or
                    <ulink url="http://www.bing.com">Bing</ulink>.
                </para>
            </listitem>
        </itemizedlist>

        <para>
            It is important to note that support questions should not be sent
            directly to MantisBT developers or through the MantisBT contact us
            pages.  Use of "Contact Us" page or emailing the developer directly
            is available if you are after a paid support or consulting service.
        </para>
    </section>

    <section id="admin.about.news">
        <title>MantisBT News</title>

        <para>
            There are several ways to keep up to date with MantisBT news.  These
            include:
        </para>

        <itemizedlist>
            <listitem>
                <para>
                    mantisbt-announce mailing list is a very low traffic
                    list that is used for major announcements,  typically
                    announcements about releases.  All MantisBT users are
                    encouraged to subscribe to this mailing list.  The
                    average traffic should be no more than one to two posts
                    per month.
                </para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>
                    <ulink url="http://www.mantisbt.org/blog/">MantisBT Blog</ulink>
                    is used to communicate announcements about new releases, topics
                    relating to MantisBT, etc.  Users are encouraged to subscribe to
                    the RSS feed to know when new posts are posted there.
                </para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>
                    <ulink url="http://twitter.com/mantisbt">Twitter</ulink> is used to
                    notify users about up-to-date details about what is happening with MantisBT development.
                    For example, a Twitter update is automatically posted by the official bug tracker
                    whenever an issue is resolved.  Twitter users are encouraged to follow "mantisbt".
                </para>
            </listitem>
        </itemizedlist>
    </section>

    <section id="admin.about.versioning">
       <title>Versioning</title>

       <para>
           The release numbering convention we use is major.minor.micro (eg. 1.2.0rc1).
       </para>

       <itemizedlist>
            <listitem>
                <para>
                     Major - Indicates a very large change in the core package.
                     Rewrites or major milestones.
                </para>
        </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>
                    Minor - Significant amount of feature addition/modification.
                </para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>
                    Micro - Mostly bug fixes and maintenance releases.
                </para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>
                    Suffix - rc1 for first release candidate, a1 for alpha 1, etc.
                </para>
            </listitem>
        </itemizedlist>
   </section>
</chapter>
