Req - an email-based request tracking system
Req is a tracking system based around this paradigm: people with
problems or questions send requests via email to a group responsible for
dealing with those issues. Those requests are assigned numbers that can be
tracked and managed in various ways. The group handling the requests needs
to have access to a UNIX computer or network.
Most of req is written in perl. It currently has a
command line interface, an
X Windows interface, and an
emacs interface.
Req was designed to be used by a systems administration group but
is being used by other types of groups as well.
Here's some background information that you might be interested in:
Req was the subject of
a paper
in the proceedings of LISA VIII (a
USENIX Association
conference). It discusses the motivation for creating req and how
req is used by the
Systems Group
at the
College of Computer Science
at Northeastern University.
Current Version: 1.2.7
Req is currently at version 1.2.7
This version mostly has few bug fixes since the 1.2 release. (See the
docs/changes file in the distribution).
It is available from our
sysadmin ftp directory as
req-1.2.7.tar.gz.
Current Development
Req is still in developement, however progress is hindered by various
other activities.
The current todo-list looks something like the following:
- Make a stop-gap release ASAP. Take 1.2.7 and patch it to work
properly with Perl5 and possibly include any other 'clean'
patches that have come across the mailing list.
- Continue the work on 2.0, a complete rewrite of the entire
system to enable many of the wish-list items:
- Multiple lists served by one installation
- Customizable Tags to flag various classifcations of
requests that people manage.
- Figure out the security model that will work properly
for a web-based and other network interfaces.
- Use a generic database interface so the backend could be
running on a speedy database server.
Alternate Development
Recently an alternate group has started work on REQng. This group is
not related to the original REQ development team, but they are
currently in an active development phase. Please visit
The REQng Development Site
for more information on their plans.
Remy Evard
webadmin@ccs.neu.edu