Difficult to integrate trac into managed applications

[samjie@…]

It would be good if it were possible to integrate trac seamlessly into a managed (web) application, especially where the users themselves are tech savvy and/or involved in development. Unfortunately this is not trivial currently due primarily to the way the CSS is laid out. I think this would be a very interesting development model - where the users themselves can participate seamlessly in documentation (Wiki), view the roadmap, file bugs and in some cases actually enhance the code.

[samjie@…]

Example of trac integrated into web (RoR) application

[anonymous]

What problem in re-writing trac templates (in common cases CSS). I think there no easy way to do this automatic. I think it no rational to develop customization engine, instead of development bug-tracking features.

[Christopher Lenz]

Replying to samjie@gmail.com:

Unfortunately this is not trivial currently due primarily to the way the CSS is laid out.

I don't understand what the problem is with the CSS. Can you please elaborate?

[Christopher Lenz]

Replying to anonymous:

What problem in re-writing trac templates (in common cases CSS). I think there no easy way to do this automatic. I think it no rational to develop customization engine, instead of development bug-tracking features.

• Being able to customize the design of Trac is important IMHO, and already possible to some extent (see for example ​my own Trac site.)
• Modifying the templates is not something we encourage, because you'll run into problems when upgrading Trac to newer versions. A lot of customizations should be possible purely in CSS (which is what I do on the site linked to above). For other kinds of customizations, we're planning to address that by adopting a new template engine (probably in 0.11).

[mou@…]

Replying to cmlenz:

• Being able to customize the design of Trac is important IMHO, and already possible to some extent (see for example ​my own Trac site.)
• Modifying the templates is not something we encourage, because you'll run into problems when upgrading Trac to newer versions. A lot of customizations should be possible purely in CSS (which is what I do on the site linked to above). For other kinds of customizations, we're planning to address that by adopting a new template engine (probably in 0.11).

In that way, i Think you're right. Your bitten instance of trac is more than just CSS or templates rewriting. I think for extension like this must provided more open API, and extension points. But now i'm awaiting for 0.10 milestone for deploy on a target system. (Sorry for my English).

[Matthew Good]

Replying to mou@msx.ru:

In that way, i Think you're right. Your bitten instance of trac is more than just CSS or templates rewriting. I think for extension like this must provided more open API, and extension points. But now i'm awaiting for 0.10 milestone for deploy on a target system. (Sorry for my English).

The Bitten Trac "theme" was done purely in CSS, as cmlenz stated above.

Currently you can also add HTML to the header and footer (see TracInterfaceCustomization) and, as cmlenz mentioned, the templating engine we will use in Trac 0.11 will support more complete customization of the HTML.

If you can provide some specific examples of extension points, or at least some idea of the customizations you're trying to make that Trac doesn't support it would be helpful, since there's not currently enough information here to act on.

[Matthew Good]

Between CSS stylesheets and Genshi templates users should have pretty extensive control over the look of their Trac sites. If you need help customizing your site you can try the MailingList for suggestions.