Why maintain two versions (ASP+PHP) of FogBugz?

Joel, why did you decide to maintain two Versions of FogBugz, ASP and PHP? PHP works just fine on Windows too, so why also have an ASP version?

Maintaining and supporting both versions sounds to me like double work.

Stefan Haubold
Friday, March 12, 2004

We only maintain one version (the ASP version). The PHP version is automatically generated using our own custom ASP compiler which emits PHP.

PHP on Windows is possible but requires extra effort on the part of our customers. The whole reason we have PHP in the first place is that we want to have the minimum possible system requirements so as to have the largest possible pool of potential customers; see http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html

Joel Spolsky
Fog Creek Software
Monday, March 15, 2004

If you only maintain the ASP version, does this mean that all the issues listed on http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBUGZ/KB/setup/ChangesinPHPupdate.html and the stream of PHP stuff cropping up on http://discuss.fogcreek.com/FogBUGZ/ handeled through changes in the ASP code only?

Just me (Sir to you)
Monday, March 15, 2004

More or less, although we have a simple preprocessor so that you can write PHP-only code in the ASP comments; this is very rarely needed.

Joel Spolsky
Fog Creek Software
Monday, March 15, 2004

Does the compiled PHP version have the same/similar performance characteristics as the ASP version?  Have any subtle bugs been introduced?

Jim Rankin
Monday, March 15, 2004

An ASP to PHP converted??!?!  Smells suspiciously like FogCreeks NEXT product to me!

Ugnonimous
Monday, March 15, 2004

It's a weekend project with ANTLR.

K
Monday, March 15, 2004

Perhaps, Ugnonimous, but I remember reading about an intern that wrote the first version of the ASP to PHP compiler during his internship.

Christoph D. Schulze
Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Sounds to me like an excellent candidate for Open Source.

You get: - A wide community of people that develop and maintain your converter.
              - Name recognition

You lose: Nothing.  Unless your planning to market it, the IP loss just doesn't translate financially (in this case).  How many competitors do you have, who are just jumping to convert their ASP based bug tracking systems to PHP but haven't done it do to lack of a converter?

anonymous
Thursday, March 18, 2004

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