Me too! This is probably the biggest feature missing in terms of what I would like to see in an upcoming release :)

just to clarify: in 0.17.3 (the latest release) the bugnotes are searchable.

I would suggest developing this feature as part of the custom fields feature. The custom fields allows the mantis administrator to define the fields that are not supported natively. These fields should be searchable.

My initial idea was to implement it using custom fields if we are just making it a free text field. However, according to the discussion in the mailing list, I think it needs to be a native field.

I think this will end up being available as custom fields. We will allow free text fields and enum fields that provide a list box. My only concern is that the fields are defined site-wide and added to projects. But each project is likely going to want its own values for a field like this. This could result in an overly large number of custom fields on sites with lots of projects.

The custom fields feature is now implemented in CVS. This will allow you to add your own fields, and link them to projects as appropriate.