A new version of Mozilla's defect tracking system, Bugzilla has been released with improvements to its WebServices interface and improved caching.

Bugzilla is a free to use bug tracking package that lets you track bugs and code changes, and submit and review patches. The developers described the new release (which has been under development for over two years) as the ‘most exciting new version of Bugzilla in our history’.

The improvements to the WebServices interface in the new version include the addition of a new REST-like endpoint alongside the existing XML-RPC and JSON-RPC endpoints. This means Bugzilla data can be accessed using standard HTTP calls for easy development.

API key support has also been added so that API calls will no longer need to use cookies or a user's login and password. Users can create a different API key for each application and revoke API keys that have been compromised or are no longer needed.

Several methods have been added and existing ones improved to give access to data that was not available before such as Group.get. The Bug.search method has been improved to enable the same types of searches as those in the Advanced Query UI, and attachment data such as flags and other metadata can now be updated through the API.

Bugzilla now has the ability to connect to a Memcached server running either locally or on the network to allow fast access to different types of data. This cuts down on the amount of database hits and can improve performance. Other areas have been improved as well to take advantage of caching in memory for objects that are retrieved multiple times during a request such as user data, etc.

Another improvement is that you can now add tags that are visible to other users to bug comments. This makes it possible to thread conversations, mark comments as spam, and identify important comments. You can also hide comments that contain specific tags if desired.

Group control has also been improved making it easier to keep bugs private to specific groups of users. In the past, Bugzilla restricted who can view a bug to everyone who was a member of all the groups the bug was in, but a mode has been added that means the bug can be viewed by a more limited group of users.

The developers have also rewritten the help and documentation using the reStructuredText format so that it can be hosted at sites such as ReadTheDocs.org and can also be more easily converted into different formats such as HTML and PDF. A new section dedicated to the new REST WebService API has also been added.  

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