git-bug: a bug tracker that lives inside your Git repository

git-bug is an open-source bug tracker that keeps bug reports inside the project's Git repository. Issues, comments and status changes are stored as native Git objects, so there is no server to run and no database to maintain: a team needs only a Git remote it already uses for code. The project reached the front page of Hacker News this week.

Working with bugs follows the habits developers already have. The git bug push command sends new issues and comments to a remote, and git bug pull brings back what teammates wrote. Because everything is in the local clone, the tracker keeps working offline, and listing or opening a bug takes milliseconds, according to the project's README. No files are added to the working tree, so the repository's contents stay untouched.

A tracker that cannot lock you in

The pitch is resilience as much as convenience. If a hosted service is unavailable or shuts down, the full history of a project's issues already sits on every developer's disk. The on-disk format is formally specified in a separate git-bug spec that covers the DAG entity format, identities and the bug entity, so other tools can read the data without the original program.

Command line, terminal and web

Users create an identity with git bug user create and open a new bug with git bug add, which launches the usual editor for a title and a message. The git bug ls command lists issues and understands a query language, for example status:open sort:edit, as well as plain text search. An interactive terminal interface, git bug termui, browses and edits bugs in place. The git bug webui command starts a web interface for browsing, searching and filtering issues, commenting, and editing titles, labels and status; it also works as a code browser with a file tree, syntax-highlighted files, commit history and diffs. The web UI ships in the same Go binary, is served by a local HTTP server and talks to the backend over a GraphQL API.

Bridges to other bug trackers

Bridges let git-bug import from and export to GitHub, GitLab, Jira and Launchpad. They are configured with git bug bridge new and synced with git bug bridge pull and git bug bridge push, so a team can keep a hosted tracker while working locally. A public web portal that would accept reports from outside contributors is still work in progress. git-bug is released under the GPLv3 or later license.