To answer my own question: I have finally opted to use Redmine and Excel after some evaluation. Redmine for bug-tracking and collaboration; Excel for my personal time-tracking.

Here's my further evaluation:

Trac: Too many plug-ins and customizations before it becomes useful. Doesn't really support one installation for multiple projects and the user account management is clumsy without plug-ins. Again, I think Trac would be really powerful with its extensibility but it's just too much overhead for a one-man shop.

Redmine: Works out of the box for all my other requirements except eclipse-integrated time-tracking. For that matter, I finally decided to roll my own spreadsheet with MS Excel.

FogBugz: Would have been excellent for my purposes except the fact that it doesn't scale to multiple clients. At least not without paying each client $25/month for the system. This would have been the best choice if budget was not a concern.

JIRA: Still haven't tried this one out myself.

This solution works for me, because:

1. Redmine has built-in tickets, multiple projects and the innovative commit-message scanning (better than post-commit hooks which sometimes fail)
2. Entering Excel timesheet is not so bad after all, compared to having to use a Web UI.
3. Self-baking timesheet means more flexibility. I'm not tied to tracking time on a per-ticket basis. I can now re-organize to say, how much time I'm spent doing Design/Communication/Testing etc. Those are things I care more about, instead of how much time I've spent on Ticket A vs. Ticket B

However...

This solution obviously doesn't scale. With a team of 4 - 5 developers the customized Excel timesheets will quickly become a nightmare to maintain. I guess that's the scope of a totally different topic, though.

For a one man shop, a Github account (or bitbucket) and pivotal tracker ^[1] (free - UPDATE: Not Free Since Jan 2011) or even Getting things gnome ^[2] should do.

BTW, there is a Fogbugz free version too. But that may not be the best still for a 1 person developer.

Give a chance to Jetbrains youtrack ^[1] . I love it. Simple, customizable, fast, neat. Doesn't make sense to describe it here, you should try it and check the documentation. It provides plugins for data migration from most if the major tracking systems.

Also Pivotal tracker is great, it's not an issue tracker, but rather a project management tool that is somehow convenient to be used together with Kanban method. It is great for an individual developer but it rather aims to be used for teams utilizing SCRUM/Kanban techniques.

My team and I use Assembla.com. Very affordable, easy to use, and has all the features you're looking for (plus many more).

JIRA ^[1] also offers a free personal license for up to 3 users.

Update: Jira is not free anymore: minimum is 10$ per month for up to 10 users

I'm a RedmineCRM plugin developer. And, of course, I recommend Redmine :). I didn't use Jira but Trac looks like old version of redmine. As far as I understand, one of the prototypes for Redmine was Trac - thats why redmine has all best features from it.

Here is my recommendation of redmine plugins for single freelancer or small company:

• First is my plugins :)
• Redmine CRM plugin ^[1] - tracking customer relations, leads, deals, contacts
• Redmine Helpdesk plugin ^[2] - email-based helpdesk integrating with contacts and issues
• Redmine Invoices plugin ^[3] - simple invoicing with little time entries integration
• Redmine tags plugin ^[4] - tagging for issues, very clear code and design
• Redmine time tracker plugin ^[5] - plugin for recording work time

And I created two cool themes for redmine ( A1 ^[6], Highrise ^[7])

FogBugz handles what you need. You can enable public submissions of cases, and your clients can use that for sending their own bugs. They will not see your internal cases and even your own notes to their cases.

Re Wiki: you can have multiple wikis. You can give your clients community accounts and configure which wiki is accessible to community users, and which is not.

Re Mylyn integration: if you use free FogBugz on Demand ^[1] for max two users (which I think would work for you just fine, because community users are not counted in this), then Foglyn is free ^[2] for you. Both Foglyn and Bugclipse synchronize active case in Eclipse/Mylyn together with Working On feature in FogBugz.

Me drive trac 0.11.2 on a private linux-box since one year with external access thru web. Now we at my company decided to take the wiki & ticketsystem inhouse and are putting a win2008-server box on duty with trac 0.12. (the setup took half a hour). Some plugins are not necessesary because the formely missing functions are now in the main. We will be half a dozend users and so we will be comfortable with trac. Just my two cents Ice

Just for completness: The current Redmine roadmap lists that "private issues" will be part of the next release: http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/roadmap

I've used all of the above-mentioned issue tracking systems.

Hands-down, the BEST has to be JIRA. As someone else here mentioned, it's ugly as hell, but that's because you can customize the heck out of it. We implemented it for a team of four developers at a global PR firm. This is not just because of a personal preference, I was sold on it after using all of the other ones out there.

Of course, the problem with JIRA is that if you have more than ten people, it's going to cost you (otherwise, I think it's free or close to it). If you can manage, get JIRA. FogBugz is also great; but if you can afford it, you may as well get JIRA.

Otherwise, if you want a good open source solution, RedMine isn't bad. It's actually good--just that after using JIRA, nothing else seems as good. :) I wouldn't even put Trac and JIRA in the same sentence (except now that I did).

I'm using Redmine on my projects and it's working extremely well, but as you say the lack of internal tickets is somewhat annoying. I do highly recommend it, though, and if you've got any Ruby/Rails experience it's very easy to modify to your needs. Adding private tickets probably wouldn't be that hard.

Have a look at DotProject (www.dotproject.net). I has many nice features out of the box. If you miss something, you can always develop it in php as an add on quite easily. There is a dotproject plug in for Eclipse that can be useful to keep track of programmers time reports.

See also Freshbooks ^[1]. This supports many of these things, and is also handy for invoicing and payments. Ideal for a one-person shop.

It doesn't really support issue tracking with the same level of detail as Redmine, but I believe it has a helpdesk/tickets system.

i use Google Docs for timesheets - and share this will my boss so he can view it anytime he likes and see what i'm up to - and never have to mail this doc around and/or make sure i have it with me on a flash disk

On issue of issue tracking system, redmine is a great choice by all accounts, but if it was me as lone ranger i would be inclined try JIRA if it has this free license for up to three rangers - otherwise redmine

To be honest, Redmine now days comes with integrated time tracking. Each Issue has an option to give time estimate. Then, later on, with each update, you can enter a short description, choose type of work done (which can be defined in project settings) and hours spent.

Good thing is that hours are then accumulated and displayed on project site. Also, you can see it in report, if specified. Bad thing is, you cannot integrate it with Visual Studio or Eclipse, so you have to do it via web user interface.

If that is not enough, there are plenty of Redmine plugins ^[1] you can use for time scheduling and reporting.

Edit: googled around a bit and found a wiki on how to connect Redmine with mylyn ^[2].

Even though you already have a solution, I would suggest you try TargetProcess ^[1]. I am in a situation similar to yours and it works great for me. It is free for up to 5 Users.

It provides all the features you mentioned and is highly customizable.

with JIRA most of ur required requirements are fulfilled (not sure how you see the first one)

• Supports multiple projects in one installation
  • Can be done
• Free eclipse integration (Mylyn)
  • Can be done, also linking svn
• Easy time-tracking without using the Web UI (Trac's post commit hook or Redmine's commit message scanning)
  • Can provide graphs, sometimes needs to create views as you want to see the information
• Clients can access the Wiki
  • Not sure
• Export the data to standard formats
  • Yes

Redmine has time tracking currently, you might want to consider just writing a plugin for eclipse... Would be worth your while, maybe spend a day over a weekend completing it.

Maybe worth a mention is a tool my colleagues and I have been trying recently, sure we're not a One Man Band but there's only 9 of us :)

The tool is called Smartsheet - smartsheet.com ^[1] - its like commonsense collab xls with extra. They just launched some new project management features too, but my team's just happy with a common place to share current project files like mockups and psds, with the ability to add discussions on each row in a sheet.

I have my smartsheets set up such that every morning I get an update on anything new that has changed, including attached files and discussions. You can export to xls, import, it ties into Google docs. Probably even more.

It's free for limited use - but we chose to pay next-to-nothing for all of the features and 250GB storage. Basically, we pay for 1 account, that user can 'create' sheets and subscribe unlimited other users who can then administer those sheets (but not create new ones themselves).

i have tried trac some time before, it's working well, even though i do agree, the interface is not that elegant or professional. compared to redmine, redmine has been proving more features with better look and feel. I am going to opt to redmine today.

I was comparing all of these tools, and my only criteria was to be integrating with SVN, Finally I found code beamer ^[1] it is answered all my question, you can watch its demo on you tube

Yodiz http://yodiz.com seems to be interesting. It doesn't support Eclipse integration (AFAIK) but it is free for individual use.