Question re Upgrading to later version of JIRA and adding GreenHopper

[Melissa B.]

Hi,

We're currently running an older version of JIRA (4.3) and will be upgrading to the latest version of JIRA We also are going to be using GreenHopper and adding additional plug-ins such as Confluence, Clover, Bamboo, FishEye, and Crowd.

Background: We no longer have our JIRA expert here to guide us through how we should do the upgrade and the migration plus adding these plug-ins so I have some initial questions and they are:

1. Since we currently have JIRA issues linked and subtasks created within our older version of JIRA, does this present a problem in upgrading to the later version of JIRA and then migrating to GH? (Are there any steps we need to take fir)?

2. I thought I read in some documentation that in order to do the upgrade to a later version of JIRA that the current version of JIRA's maintenance still needs to be to be active. Is that true?

3. We are also upgrading our Subversion repository and our current version of JIRA is integrated with our older SVN so do you have any suggestions for how we should handle the transition in terms of the steps needed to take? For instance, would you recommend that we have our latest version of JIRA integrated with our later version of SVN and then add the GH plug in before we transition from older JIRA to the newer one?

Sorry to ask so many questions as I'm the software CM for the rogram and even the developers on my program are not sure how to proceed because no one here is an expert on the Atlassian tools and the initial set up of our older JIRA and SVN were done long before the rest of us were here.

Any help/guidance you could provide would sure be appreciated.

Thank you!

Melissa

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist] · Accepted solution]

1. No issues with that

2. Yes, you should have an active license

3. You can do it both ways. First connect to latest SVN - make sure it works and then upgrade JIRA. OR Upgrade JIRA with old SVN and then upgrade SVN. Don't do both together because you will be wondering where the issue is if something goes wrong. In both cases, I suggest to install GH after the upgrade. Makes life easier that way.

[Melissa B.]

Hi Jobin,

Thank you so much for getting back to me so quickly. So to confirm...

1. With regard to question 1, there's no issues then in migrating from our older Jira version to our newer JIRA when there are already issue links and subtasks involved with our older version of JIRA and no issue in adding GH in to this scenario. Would you recommend migrating first to the newer JIRA and then adding GH or adding GH to the newer JIRA and migrating from older JIRA to the newer one (which would then have GH already added)?

2. I just checked the 'License Details' of our current JIRA and it says "JIRA support and updates for this license ended on 20/Sep/11. JIRA updates created after 20/Sept/11 are not valid for this license". What does that mean in terms of upgrading to our newer JIRA?

3. I think I understand what you said about #3 so that's good advice.

4. This is an added question: In terms of steps to take when migrating from older JIRA to newer one, I should first do a backup and a reindex of current JIRA (only because we have some things to reindex) and then migrate to the newer JIRA correct?

5. This is another added question: We are using our current JIRA for O&M plus for new development. However, the new development is toward a major release which is where developers are checking in their code to the later SVN version (yet the plan was not to integrate with JIRA until we had the later version of JIRA stood up and integrated). This is (I think) making it a nightmare because with the new development going in to our newer SVN and we're not using the later version of JIRA yet, this means from a traceability standpoint that it will be hard to verify what was really resolved because I've lost that traceability. Unfortunately the infrastructure for all of our tools was not in place when development had to start for this new major effort we're working on so do you see this as something that will be very hard to go back and get everything in sync once we have the later JIRA and later SVN integrated?

My apologies in that you're having to deal with someone who's non-technical but I never thought I'd be in this position when I took this job 4 months ago.

Looking forward to your wisdom and guidance oh great one. :)

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

1, 4, 5. Can I understand what do you mean by migrate? Do you have a new JIRA version installed with some data already in it or are you just trying yo upgrade your existing JIRA to new version?

2. You will have to purchase a new license. Not sure if it is just support but you can check with Atlassian sales.

[Melissa B.]

We do not have our new version of JIRA stood up (yet). We are still using our older version of JIRA which is integrated with our older SVN. So we have 2 scenarios going on:

1. Current development work is going on for O&M and for new development that's for a major new release. However, our current JIRA instance is integrated with our current SVN for just the O&M part.

2. Right now our developers are using our current version of JIRA for tracking all the new development work toward this new release only because we do not have the newer JIRA installed yet and integrated with the newer SVN (plus don't forget we still have to add in GH). So our devs are using this later version of SVN to check their code in to but again, it's not integrated with the newer JIRA only because we've not set it up yet.

As of tomorrow, Friday, we are having a meeting to discuss the path forward but I'm afraid we may be unprepared to have this meeting because we don't have enough knowledge about how to proceed forward.

Does this help clarify my question? I may not be articulating this in a way that you have a full grasp of our situation and me thinks because we don't have things in place and development is going forward this is going to mean big 'doo-doo' for us downstream. In other words the horses are loose and we're trying to corral them.

Any advice? Should I find a new job? LOL

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

Well, as long as you don't have a new JIRA installed yet, I would look at upgrading your existing JIRA to the new version and not install a new one and migrate things over. Both are 2 different things. If I understood correctly, this is what I would do.

1. Upgrade the extsting JIRA to the new version

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Upgrading+JIRA

2. Install GH and configure it as you need

3. Connect to new SVN

[Melissa B.]

So the first thing is e'll need to purchase a license for our current JIRA since that's expired and you said it would be for JIRA support but to contact the Sales people for the correct info.

Secondly, what advice would you offer for code that's already checked in to our newer SVN (and that's not tied to the newer JIRA since that's not in place yet)? Right now any code checked in for the new development effort is not tied to any JIRA issue.

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

Regarding license, yes. If you are upgrading to JIRA5, you need a new license and hence it is best to talk to sales team.

Regarding SVN, it doesn't matter. Tying Code with a JIRA issue is done by providing issue key in the commit messages. You can create the integration any time - with old SVN, new SVN...

[Melissa B.]

Ok, thanks Jobin. I've sent in a message to the sales team about the license issue and will pass on this other info on to the team.

[Renjith Pillai]

Jobin has answered all your queries Melissa, I guess you need not get a new job, we have such an awesome community here to support you :)

Btw, one additional point, if you organization is having plans to use Fisheye it would be better to integrate the SVN to Fisheye and connect FishEye to JIRA. This takes away the load from JIRA to handle SVN, and you get a beautiful source browser as well :)

http://www.atlassian.com/software/fisheye/overview/