Inspirational Technology

Trac is a great application to track software development projects, but anyone who’s tried to install it knows it can be a real pain at times. This is especially true if you want to get it working on Windows or Mac OS X. Because there’s such obvious pain here, we decided to give it the JumpBox treatment.

So here’s how to install trac in about 10 minutes. And the best part, for nine of those minutes you can put your feet up and enjoy a cup of coffee (or it you really wanted to you could do other real work, your choice I guess ). The best part, this process will work roughly the same whether your using Mac OS X, Windows XP or Linux. All that’s required as a starting point is virtualization software, either VMWare or Parallels.

Here we go.

1. Download

   Visit the JumpBox web site and download the Trac/Subversion JumpBox. Downloading will take a few minutes so proceed with the coffee sipping.

   

2. Extract

   Once the download is complete you need to extract the archive. It’s pretty big, but the size is worth it for the time it saves. Plus you really wanted to drink some more coffee anyway.

   

3. Run

   Once the extraction is complete look in the folder and double click on the JumpBox.vmx file if you’re using VMWare or JumpBox.pvs if you’re using Parallels. The JumpBox will take a few seconds to load, just enough time for a little more coffee.

   

4. Collect

   Ahh, now comes the hard part. Once it’s finished loading you need to locate the IP address to use to access it. You’ll find it on the console for the virtual machine. Locate the line that says “Application Page:” and use a web browser to open that URL.

   

5. Configure

   Now it’s time for the very complicated installation process. You’ll be prompted with a short form asking for a little information to configure things. OK, it’s really just four pieces of information and at this point you’re just seconds away from having a working Trac install. Fill it out and click the button at the bottom.

   

6. Click

   That was easy, and the app is now configured and ready to use. Just click the URL for the application and start using your Trac installation.

7. Enjoy

   What could be simpler?

   

You now have a fully functioning, self contained installation of Trac 0.10.4 and Subversion. Besides the tremendous time savings from this, your installation also isn’t tied to the system it’s running on. Need to move it to a server? Just shut it down, copy the trac directory to the server, correct the paths in the virtual machine configuration files and start it back up.

This process is simple enough that anyone can do it, and it’s also the exact same process for every application packaged by JumpBox. So want a Drupal, Joomla or MediaWiki installation? Now, you know how to do that in ten minutes or less as well. No more excuses, so get a Trac install will ya.