
Fossil – A high-reliability distributed software configuration management system - open-source-ux
https://www.fossil-scm.org/xfer/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki
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rpdillon
It's too bad the 'open source' in the title triggered a wave a resentment in
the discussion. I agree it sounds argumentative, considering the licensing of
Git itself is more 'Free' than that of Fossil.

But the underlying point here is an interesting one: if I'm a GitHub user and
I'm not happy with the idea of Microsoft acquiring the company, what
alternatives exist if I want to move away from GitHub?

There are tons of them, but it the realm of simple, self-hosted solutions that
offer code hosting, issue tracking, and a wiki, Fossil stacks up quite well.
It's a single executable that's lightweight enough that it can be called via
CGI in shared hosting environment to replicate much of what GitHub offers. In
that context, I think Fossil is worth looking at.

If moving away from Git isn't an option, I'm a big fan of Gitea[0], though I
haven't hosted it on the internet before (unlike Fossil, which I do use to
host my side-projects). Gitea is a community-driven fork of Gogs. Both are
single-executable Go applications that offer much of the same functionality
GitHub offers.

[0]: [https://gitea.io/en-US/](https://gitea.io/en-US/)

~~~
bovermyer
For what it's worth, I've been using Gogs for several months with no problems.

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bluejekyll
The front page doesn't really make me think, oh I want to use this instead of
Git.

On the other-hand, this project looks interesting:
[https://pijul.org/](https://pijul.org/)

Pijul is claiming a number of features that make me think it might be worth
checking out.

edit, removed this first sentence: The title is misleading as Git is open-
source.

~~~
simplify
Nice, they even have their own "github"
[https://nest.pijul.com/pijul_org/pijul](https://nest.pijul.com/pijul_org/pijul)

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fundamental
Well, that seems to be a negative reaction to someone posting a link to
fossil. I think it's pretty relevant since fossil takes the approach of
storing everything you'd need to host the repository within a checkout. That
includes the project's web presence, the issues, a wiki, etc.

I think fossil is pretty darn neat in that regard, however some of the
implementation choices come off as esoteric after dealing with the git
ecosystem for a while. Other than that fossil feels like it has some nice
ideas which haven't been effectively explored by other SCM offerings, though
unfortunately they haven't been totally explored by fossil devs either (IMO).
Stuff like working with issues in the repository is nice, but the command line
interface that fossil presents to work with them is very clunky.

If fossil had gotten to the point of critical mass before git then I'm sure
these sorts of issues would have been handled, but since it didn't we're
somewhat stuck with what's currently available.

~~~
devoply
Those features sound like something the developers of Git should consider
adding to the feature set of Git... So that everything goes with the repo
instead of staying in the webapp.

~~~
fundamental
The challenge with respect to that is that there are pretty notable trade offs
with design choices for implementing a bug tracker, wiki, etc at this stage of
git's development. Any one choice by the official git project core would be
met with serious push back. The best outcome for git in my opinion would be
some work put into in-repo issue tracking, but not as a part of git's core
distribution.

There have been a number of independent efforts to tackle all of these
problems but they've lost steam for the past 5 years or so. It's too bad since
it's a pretty neat problem space to see solutions built in and to discuss
them, but that seems to be the current state of things.

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petepete
But git has always has been, and still is open source. Of course, Fossil has
some advantages but claiming the OS high ground shouldn't be one.

~~~
xj9
OP is obviously editorializing, that isn't the title of the linked document.

~~~
cjoy
... which also happens to match the style of the fossil readme where they are
comparing it against git. Instead of presenting factual differences and their
dis-/advatages in practical application, it reads like an ego piece and, at
least for me, does not win fossil any sympathy.

[https://www.fossil-scm.org/xfer/doc/trunk/www/fossil-v-
git.w...](https://www.fossil-scm.org/xfer/doc/trunk/www/fossil-v-git.wiki)

~~~
apotheon
That's not a readme.

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dymk
As a response to the GH acquisition: this is like suggesting dvorak because
Microsoft made a qwerty keyboard.

~~~
apotheon
No, not really. If you're unwilling to use a Microsoft code hosting platform,
and are unwilling to screw around with hosting your own ticket system, wiki,
and DVCS all at the same time, but need all three of those things and would be
willing to host a CGI script, you get ticket system, wiki, and DVCS "for free"
with Fossil by basically just dropping a single binary into cgi-bin.

Self-hosting Git with ticketing system, wiki, and web front-end can be a giant
pain, depending on what you need and how you do it. Fossil is stupidly easy,
by contrast. Sure, there are some tools out there to make self-hosting Git
with all the trimmings easier, but so far I haven't dealt with one that is
actually as easy to host as Fossil.

Basic shared hosting with the ability to store repository files and run CGI is
enough to self-host Fossil with all the trimmings. Thus, this isn't about
replacing Git, per se. It's about replacing GitHub, for at least some people's
use cases.

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jccooper
Fossil has simple (and free) online hosting at
[http://chiselapp.com](http://chiselapp.com)

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zippzom
Git is already open source. What does this do differently than Git?

~~~
xj9
fossil doesn't only version control the source code. other project-meta like
wiki and issues are also replicated when you clone a fossil repo.

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Skunkleton
Why would I want that?

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jpfed
I don't use fossil, but I have fantasized about keeping docs and issues in
version control alongside the code.

My organization has churned through several different issue trackers in the
last few years. And a lot of that old data is just gone; project owners never
bothered pulling Fogbugz tickets into Phabricator or never pulled Phabricator
tasks into JIRA. If we had issue tracking that lived alongside the source code
in version control, then the underlying data would last as long as the code
did.

~~~
xapata
Issues are tricky, but docs are easy to store in git. In fact, I thought that
was standard practice for most folks. What documentation tools do you use that
prevent using git?

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soapdog
Maybe it is because I am not a native English speaker but I had a different
understanding of the headline than some people here. I read it as "an
alternative to Git, which is also open source" and not an implied argument
that Git is not open source...

Also I've been wanting to dive deeper into Fossil for a while. Will try it
now...

~~~
catach
> I read it as "an alternative to Git, which is also open source"

As a native English speaker I'd say that's a perfectly reasonable
interpretation. And I think most would have assumed that interpretation had it
not been for the MS/Github news.

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pythonaut_16
Fossil is interesting and cool (written by the same guy as SQLite to
facilitate SQLite development, but it's disingenuous to describe is as "an
open source alternative to Git" when Git is open source, GPL licensed, and
originally created by Linus Torvalds to facilitate the development of the
(also GPL) Linux kernel.

~~~
msoucy
It's open source, and it's an alternative to git (or at least claims to be, I
haven't tried it myself). It's not inaccurate, though it could be misleading
if one doesn't already know that Git is open source itself.

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peterwwillis
Here's another one: Gitea, a fork of Gogs with some extra functionality
[https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/comparison/](https://docs.gitea.io/en-
us/comparison/)

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nas
Is this supposed to be a response to the github acquisition? github != git.

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deathtrader666
Why is this flagged?

