After spending much time in the incubator of Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of nearly 150 Open Source projects and initiatives, Bloodhound has finally graduated to officially become a top-level project.

A highly flexible, open-source tool for collaborating on software development projects, Bloodhound comes with a whole bunch of tools including issue tracking, wiki and repository browsing based on Trac, the Open Source, Web-based project management and bug tracking system. It is basically a fork of the widely used Trac, and adds multiple project hosting and an improved user interface.

“When Bloodhound entered the incubator it was a completely new project, though being built on top of the Trac framework has given it a strong foundation. Community growth and self-governing to the standards of a top-level project within The Apache Foundation has given the team invaluable experience,” Bloodhound’s Vice President Gary Martin said.

“Becoming a TLP is fantastic recognition of the progress Bloodhound has made so far in adopting the ‘Apache Way’ but we do not plan to rest on our laurels. We actively welcome potential contributors and continue to look at ways of reducing barriers to contribution,” he added.

Bloodhound became a part of the incubator in December 2011, when global software provider WANdisco submitted it to the Apache Incubator. Though the official graduation of Bloodhound occurred on March 20th, the news was made public earlier last week.

Here’s what Bloodhound’s website says about it,

“Apache Bloodhound is being built on the shoulders of the Trac project, a giant in the field of project management and bug tracking. Features such Wiki and a source code browser are deeply integrated. Easily manage anything from your pet project to dozens of commercial or open source products, and scale seamlessly in-between. The built-in Wiki allows you to create proposals and store other information.”

Apache has been the center of a multitude of awesome developer projects for a long time now and the foundation is something that always has something to look forward to.