As a Jira Administrator, how do you track customizations?

[Erik Husby]

I am the system administrator for several Jira instances. After having done many upgrades, I know that there are many files that need to be tweaked. These include the configuration settings that exist external to the database as well as any customizations of email templates and other files. I am looking for ideas on how to make this process easier and more automated.

I am considering using a GIT repository to contain all changed files coupled with scripts that would apply the customizations.

I need to facilitate several tasks:

1. Determine differences between our customizations and a new Jira distribution.

2. Durring Jira upgrades, apply the customizations to a staging installation and then to the production installation.

I'd like to hear what others do.

[Nic Brough (Adaptavist)]

Changes on the file system - I build it from WAR and then source-control the "edit-webapp" directory.

For stuff in the database, it's a bit harder, but I've given up nowadays - it's in the ui, and I scribble up Confluence pages to cover anything I've done that isn't blindingly obvious.