Open Source @lemmy.ml ZeroOne @lemmy.world 3 wk. ago

FOSSIL: A complete Git alternative

I would like to introduce you lovely OpenSource Lovers to a GIT-Alternative called FOSSIL that I also stumbled upon because of this Blog. It's basically opensource Github-in-a-box which means it's an SCM with:

Bug-tracker
Ticketting-system
Forum
Wiki-system
even a Chat-functionality
Has built-in GUI
Also has a Web-Server
Self-Hostable like Gitea/Forgejo

& the best part it's all in ONE STANDALONE FILE!!! which is extremely lightweight which you can copy to your $PATH & works even in crappy internet. how cool is that!!

However this tool supports a completely different style of development in FOSS called the "Cathedral-Style" whereas GIT suports a "Bazaar-Style" The person behind Fossil is the creator of SQLite, Dr.Richard Hipp & they even made other projects to support Fossil like a PIC-Like language called PikChr Well just in case; here's a list of difference between Git vs Fossil & guess what!! they even have a hosting service called CHISEL

Listen; Just check it out & use it for fun in your spare time even with the flaws it has (& Try out Darcs & Pijul as well)

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121 comments

What about git needs replacement?
Fossil is more like a Jira replacement, and its built by one person with a severe case of NIH. Not necessarily a bad thing but I lived through it with Ubuntu, not really a fan of this philosophy.
I support reconsidering Git VCS hegemony. Darcs & Pijul too for DVCS.
open-source

Ticketing

Cathedral-style coding isn't very Open-Source, if you believe the man who wrote the book and coined the term.

it's okay to post your own words instead of drunkenly jamming HTML into Markdown.
This thread might be the fastest I've ever seen discussion devolve from "that could be interesting" to just incomprehensible screaming.
Spent 5 minutes on the website and couldn't get a peek at their code... The most fundamental thing, IMO.
Learned fossil in college and I intensely disliked it
This seems really cool!! And I love to see alternatives to git. But @MITM0@lemmy.world, you need to cool it on the replies. You're making the Fossil community look hostile by association.
Tho we also got mercurial right?
I really like the idea of using a relation db to track change history. It removes so much weirdness and quirkiness that git has. You just have regular SQL queries you can use to go through history and ask questions about the state of the repo. I also like that it's immutable so you don't have to worry about things like rebasing and other ways you can fuck up history in git. The problems solved by mucking with history largely go away when you can query the db with a rich syntax.
I love Fossil and use it for all my personal projects! I use syncthing to keep my all my repositories updated across devices and it works great!

I do wish I better understood either self-hosting or that there were more web hosts though, it would make collaboration easier when I feel like sharing. A git(hub) bridge could do it too I guess...
Seems pretty cool! I have to try it out. Thanks for sharing.

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