Pushing the Need for Bug Tracking?

NorthwestWolf asks: "I am the sole developer for a medium-sized company. My work consists of developing intranet applications for the production, accounting, shipping and engineering activities at all of our locations. My dilema is that my boss is dead set on the idea that we DO NOT need a bug tracking system, nor does he feel that we have a need for version tracking. As much as I strive to write perfect code...that doesn't happen. Most recently, I asked to install a lightweight piece of bug tracking software that would not tie into the database, and was written in PHP (what our apps are already developed in). This was to be for me, and me alone; although my boss does produce some code and is the reason that I would like version tracking (he has made changes to my code that I was not aware of until I noticed problems with certain functions). So, to those of you who are, or have been in a similiar situation...what are you doing, or what have you done to get critical development tools such as these implemented at work?"

Comments

Take Matters Into Your Own Hands

[DJenk47]

I was in the same position, since I was the only developer for small internal applications, my superiors wouldn't allow any sort of bugtracking or versioning software, since it was seen as a waste of time and money (even if the software was free).
I didn't really care until my code started getting changed by other people - other people (I won't use the word developer since I was really the only coder) that thought they knew what they were doing.
I started off by changing permissions on directories so that no one else had access. But the permissions would be reset by the admins so that the files could be edited. Then I started making daily archives and hashing them, and it worked for a while, but was a hassle. So I started keeping detailed records of time spent fixing the changes. During our weekly team meetings, I started revealing just how much time was spent fixing other code changes. The changes stopped for a while, but resumed.
So one day, I "accidently" lost the entire codebase. And preached that versioning software would have allowed me to pick up where the loss happened.

As for bug tracking, I had to write my own system that was hosted locally (via an illicit install of cygwin/apache/mysql/php), just to track them. One day, my boss accidently saw it and thought it was the greatest thing since slided bread and wanted everyone to use it. I quickly got rid of it off the work machine, but soon we had bug tracking software and my boss was praised by her superiors for her innovative thinking.