Book Review: JIRA Development Cookbook

JIRA Development Cookbook,  Jobin Kuruvilla, Packt 2011

Summary: lots of interesting JIRA recipes, lots of source code, and not too many bugs.
                   If you're working with JIRA, buy a copy.

The Good Bits

The chapters on gadgets and JQL are especially useful. The UI recipes are all things I've been asked to do for clients in the past. My favorite one is adding JavaScript to a field's description to make the help text expand (p.85).

The Custom Fields chapter is also well written and the comparison of version 1 and version 2 plugins is excellent.

The screenshots are all done well.

Not As Good Bits

• Applicable JIRA versions are noted in many, but not all, locations where it matters.

• Testing of plugins is glossed over. Which is fair enough, since that's exactly what I did in my own Practical JIRA Plugins book.

• There are few if any references to other plugins that show examples of each recipe in use.

• Many of the changes involve modifying the JIRA database schema or the application files rather than providing a plugin to do this. This makes upgrades harder than necessary.

Oh Well ..

• The publisher could have done a better job proof editing this book. 
• There are numerous rough sentences and improperly capitalized parameter names.
• I don't have a VAT number so I had to buy my copy through Amazon instead of the Packt website.

Disclaimer: I'm the author a similar but much shorter (and cheaper) book Practical JIRA Plugins (O'Reilly August 2011). After I bought a copy of JIRA Development Cookbook I was given an online copy by Packt to help with this review.