Unfuddle

Unfuddle.com provides issue tracking tickets, a documentation wiki, Subversion & Git repositories along with web-based interfaces to all these services. Whilst beginning a new personal iPhone project today, I wanted to test a hosted service to aid with small, non-public development projects.

Sign up was quick and simple; further profile information can be entered at a later date. Next, the user is given the option to create a new repository—a choice of Subversion or Git. I chose Subversion. The repository was available immediately both in local client applications and in the web-based browser. The connection was not the fastest, especially for a Sunday afternoon and I wonder how it will cope midweek. As mentioned, I writing a small, by their nature, iPhone application which shouldn't overwhelm any network connections.

The UI is OK. The interface, especially for tickets is not as nice as lighthouseapp.com which we use at Watershed. The web-based source code browser does support Objective-C highlighting. Which was nice.

An HTTP REST API is available with read & write access to most of the data. At Watershed, a Cocoa bundle uses the REST API to allow end users to send feedback from within the application directly into the Lighthouse database. Repository commit comments can be linked against individual bugs with a rudimentary text formatting pattern in the comment.

A dashboard widget is available for MacOS X. The widget is well designed and shows the latest messages, repository commits and project progress. Clearly designed and concise email reports can be received hourly, or at less frequent intervals. I found, as a solo developer, these two features less useful but small teams may benefit.

Unfuddle could save lots of time, configuring a server, providing network access & off-site backup services, adding repositories and writing Subversion hook scripts.