A.10. Relationships

RT maintains relationships between tickets and other objects. Relationships in RT can be between multiple tickets on the same RT instance but also can link tickets to external items like URLs, FedEx shipping numbers, or even other bug tracking systems like Bugzilla. RT defines a few basic types of relationships:

Depends on

The ticket can't be resolved unless another ticket is also resolved. The converse is Depended on by.

Refers to

The ticket doesn't need the other ticket, but it would sure be useful for you to look at it. The converse is Referred to by.

Parent

A big, general ticket ("Move house").

Child

A subproject of a parent ("Hire movers" "Pack" "Eat pizza").

By defining relationships between tickets, it is possible to clearly define a hierarchy of work that needs to be done in order for a ticket to be resolved. This can be helpful in figuring out dependencies; for example, if new feature X can't be added until bug Y is fixed, then the ticket for feature X depends on the ticket for bug Y and can't be resolved until the bug is fixed.