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Why I Use Fossil

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Re: Why I Use Fossil

#11

Post by FraaJad »

jfager wrote: post #10
FraaJad wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fossil actually fits this use case better than git or mercurial, because fossil is just a 700 kb executable that you can take with you. No need to install a package or hunt for cygwin versions. and the whole repository is just a single file. Backing up your whole project and the SCM is a matter of copying two files over. Git is a swiss army knife for fossil's switch blade.

Fossil has a wiki, issue tracker, etc, all in a small little portable package - it's far more deserving of the 'swiss army knife' label than git. Git's more like an industrial lathe or something.

agreed! I was running low on industrial terminology atm.

Re: Why I Use Fossil

#12

Post by pjhyett »

nex3 wrote: post #9
pjhyett wrote: post #6

If I may quickly address Zed's concerns about putting his code on GitHub: 1. GitHub is a node on a distributed graph, you're still in full control of your source and its history thanks to Git. Push your code to a dozen different places, Git doesn't care and neither do we. 2. We have soft disk space limits. If your OS project is massive, we're not going to suddenly start charging you if you exceed that space. We want…

I think the distribution issue is more about metadata than the code itself: issues, wiki pages, and comments are still centralized on GitHub. With Fossil, I gather, they're distributed among each clone.

We're slowly but surely moving towards having those things either become git-backed or exportable. Wikis are first up and we're very close.

Re: Why I Use Fossil

#13

Post by trainwreckin »

Ugh.

Zed, like drh miss the point yet again because they are closed minded programmers and keep on forgetting that people who are not programmers may end up using fossil as they wish to contribute a ticket or documentation to a project running on fossil, but get reluctant dealing with the crappy UI or the fact that they have to learn to do markup. It's also clear that drh really isn't interested in anybody else but his needs.

Git has Junio Hamano who made it usable and practical to people who weren't Linus. Who's this hero in Fossil? Well, it looks like the mailing list is still waiting for them to arrive.

Re: Why I Use Fossil

#14

Post by FraaJad »

trainwreckin wrote: post #13

Ugh. Zed, like drh miss the point yet again because they are closed minded programmers and keep on forgetting that people who are not programmers may end up using fossil as they wish to contribute a ticket or documentation to a project running on fossil, but get reluctant dealing with the crappy UI or the fact that they have to learn to do markup. It's also clear that drh really isn't interested in anybody else but h…

It is a program for programmers by a programmer. And Fossil is a VCS first and and SCM second.

The beauty of git lies in what it does and that is managing code. The same is true of fossil. DRH is known for making sqlite and in turn fossil rock solid, and easy to program against. THAT is a far better feature and interface than some UI nitpicking you might throw at it.

Re: Why I Use Fossil

#15

Post by stonemetal »

mkramlich wrote: post #3

he gave reasonable arguments, assuming one does always want all of those extra features beyond VCS for each new project. for me, most of the projects i start never need to go public, and of those that do, most don't need a full-blown wiki or issue tracking system. README and TODO file are sufficient 99% of the time, esp with no public collabs. so git and github still hit the sweetspot for me in the default case.

I didn't find his arguments that compelling. User management is something you are going to have to do no matter what VCS you are using Fossil doesn't remove that requirement. Last I checked Fossil didn't magically generate custom CSS and project logos so I am still going to have to do all that stuff with fossil. Pretty much every thing on the if I don't use fossil I will have to do this extra stuff is stuff you have to do for fossil as well.

All this while fossil is relatively untested by comparison. If my project needs something more than a wiki then I stuck doing all the setup and config any way so I might as well use a real wiki and ticketing system.

Re: Why I Use Fossil

#16

Post by nuclear_eclipse »

johnsea wrote: post #8

Instead of a per-project-trac you could setup redmine which supports multiple projects (tickets, wiki, forum, repo). Fossil looks interesting but I wouldn't want to pass on git.

Or MantisBT, if you don't like managing Python/Rails processes. With plugins, MantisBT can not only support multiple projects, but integrating multiple repositories of multiple VCS types. I ran a single install at my last job with many repos of three different source control types (Git, SVN, and an in-house SCM built on SCCS).

Re: Why I Use Fossil

#17

Post by bensummers »

So, if you want to download and build it, here's the page:

http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/build.wiki

The prebuilt images are labelled as 'snapshots', and or you can "Select a version of of fossil you want to download" to build from source with no guidance on what version would be a good idea to use.

Maybe everything is stable? Who knows.

Re: Why I Use Fossil

#18

Post by wingo »

FraaJad wrote: post #4
mkramlich wrote: post #3

he gave reasonable arguments, assuming one does always want all of those extra features beyond VCS for each new project. for me, most of the projects i start never need to go public, and of those that do, most don't need a full-blown wiki or issue tracking system. README and TODO file are sufficient 99% of the time, esp with no public collabs. so git and github still hit the sweetspot for me in the default case.

Fossil actually fits this use case better than git or mercurial, because fossil is just a 700 kb executable that you can take with you. No need to install a package or hunt for cygwin versions. and the whole repository is just a single file. Backing up your whole project and the SCM is a matter of copying two files over. Git is a swiss army knife for fossil's switch blade.

> and the whole repository is just a single file

http://keithp.com/blogs/Repository_Formats_Matter/

Re: Why I Use Fossil

#19

Post by masklinn »

pjhyett wrote: post #12
nex3 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the distribution issue is more about metadata than the code itself: issues, wiki pages, and comments are still centralized on GitHub. With Fossil, I gather, they're distributed among each clone.

We're slowly but surely moving towards having those things either become git-backed or exportable. Wikis are first up and we're very close.

Exportable is not the same thing as naturally distributed though. And git-backed is nice, but with fossil it's fossil-baked as everything is tucked into the exact same repository.

> Wikis are first up and we're very close.

Well yeah but as far as I understand, with Fossil it's done already, not just close (and I'd say distributed bug trackers are closer than wikis if not done already)

Re: Why I Use Fossil

#20

Post by masklinn »

stonemetal wrote: post #15
mkramlich wrote: post #3

he gave reasonable arguments, assuming one does always want all of those extra features beyond VCS for each new project. for me, most of the projects i start never need to go public, and of those that do, most don't need a full-blown wiki or issue tracking system. README and TODO file are sufficient 99% of the time, esp with no public collabs. so git and github still hit the sweetspot for me in the default case.

I didn't find his arguments that compelling. User management is something you are going to have to do no matter what VCS you are using Fossil doesn't remove that requirement. Last I checked Fossil didn't magically generate custom CSS and project logos so I am still going to have to do all that stuff with fossil. Pretty much every thing on the if I don't use fossil I will have to do this extra stuff is stuff you have…

> Last I checked Fossil didn't magically generate custom CSS and project logos so I am still going to have to do all that stuff with fossil

I believe you really don't want to do that though, last time I checked Fossil generated HTML from C, either directly or getting it out of the sqlite db.

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