FAQ: What is Mantis?

Mantis is the name of SimSig's internal issue-tracking database, and is used by simulation developers and testers. When a simulation issue is reported on the forum, and a tester confirms that it's a software issue, the tester creates a report on Mantis for the developer to read and respond to. The developer marks the issue as resolved once the problem has been fixed.

Access to Mantis is limited to developers and testers only. However, most tickets raised since around 2020 are now available on a read-only basis for all users. Some tickets are not available if they contain, for example, sensitive information. Core code tickets are not currently available to the public but that may change in the future.

What do the numbers mean?

Often, testers will state something like 'Mantis #12345 raised'. This refers to the report's number. Although there are a lot of reports (approaching issue #20000 at the time of writing) this number includes every issue raised since 2008, for all simulations and SimSig's core code. Additionally, many tickets were raised during a the development of a simulation prior to public release, and some are 'wish list' items rather than bugs. The number also has no bearing on the order in which issues are fixed, or the timescale.

Last edited by GeoffM on 01/06/2022 at 21:21