Last week I posted about a custom [[TestLink()]] macro I had written for Trac. Yesterday I wrote another macro to do something similar, but in doing so I found out that I was probably doing a lot more work than I needed to.

The macro I wrote allowed me to write [[TestLink(m3-123)]] to link directly to test case 123 in the m3 project. It was about seven lines of python and not the most complex thing in the world, but nowhere near as simple as using an InterWiki prefix. I did this by adding the following line to my Trac install’s InterMapTxt wiki page:

TestCase https://devtest.example.com/linkto.php?tprojectPrefix=$1&item=testcase&id=$1-$2

This allows me to replace [[TestLink(m3-123)]] with testcase:m3:123.

There are tradeoffs of course. The macro allows full control using python. That allowed me to write a single macro that could produce links to different places in our CRM system based on the format of the single argument to the macro. Since I don’t get that flexibility with InterWiki links, I had to use two InterWiki links instead of a single macro.

On the other hand, the InterWiki links are simpler to write, look better, and are much closer to the standard Trac wiki link style that my users are already used to. Also, they have the advantage that they are expanded in ticket custom text fields and macros aren’t.

In the end I’ll keep both the macros and the InterWiki links for these cases since they aren’t mutually exclusive, but I’ll definitely turn to InterWiki links before I turn to writing a custom macro in the future.