3w 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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122 comments

I support reconsidering Git VCS hegemony. Darcs & Pijul too for DVCS.
- Darcs does not require a central server, and works perfectly in offline mode.
  Git can be used that way too. Am I missing something?
  
  No, you are not. People regularly equate Git and GitHub, though.
  
  no, this is exactly what git does
  
  So GIT has a ticketting system, a Wiki, Bug-tracker built-into it along with a Version-tracker
  It also has a Sync All command (I'm sure Git also has it Somewhere) ??
  
  Why should git have a mediocre ticketing system instead of getting out of the way of dedicated ticketing systems?
  Small personal projects just need a text file with a Todo list, large organisations might need something super heavy weight like Jira. If your VCS has a ticketing system it's going to be dead weight for a large chunk of users, because there's no one-size fits all solution.
  
  Why shouldn't git have one ? Why not avoid the bloat & Fossil was specifically made for get this small-medium size teams which can be scaled to bigger ones
  
  I don't think you understand what the word bloat means.
  
  git add todo.md
  
  Now do that without the markdown file
  
  git add todo.txt
  
  Now do that without a text file
  
  git add todo.txt.gz
  
  Darcs came out in 2003—Git in 2005. It was novel at the time compared to the alternatives. Darcs started as alternative to CSV & Subversion, not Git. Unlike Git it works on patches, not snapshots which has advantanges in merge conflicts.
  
  Git uses ~~mergetools~~, which do whatever you make them to. Patches can be created from snapshots, but snapshots are not guaranteed to be creatable from patches - you might not have original state.
  EDIT: it uses merge drivers.
  
  Patch Theory operates under the premise that patches commute & order should not matter until there is a conflict. Git will throw fits if you pull in a patch at the wrong order giving you a different snapshot.
  
  Specific merge tool can throw fits. Git doesn't care about specifics of how merge operation is done, it just tells to merge driver to merge three files(A, B and common ancestor) and stops if driver reports an error.
  Also to correct myself: merge driver, not mergetool.
  
  Am I missing something?
  No and, in fact, this was (and still is) a selling point of Git over the alternatives (e.g. Subversion) available at the time that required you to "check out" some code and no one else could check out/modify that code while you had it checked out.
- dont forget about jujutsu
  
  Since jujutsu is Git-compatible it has very much replaced Git for me and is what I'm using for everything now. Its workflow is so good and miles ahead of Git.
  I was trying out Pijul for a while before that and while it has a lot of great ideas and has a lot of potential due to the way its foundations work its interface is way too janky right now and missing features and nothing I've reported or the many changes I've submitted have been fixed/pulled since March. I'd really like it to be good but alas...
  
  I ‘forgot’ it on purpose.
  The compatibility with Git means it is ultimately shackled to the design decisions fundamental to Git which require hacky workarounds. The maker of Pijul has pointed out some of the fundamental ways it can never handle patches is the manner of Darcs/Pijul, but I am not in the position to pull some of these quotes.
  I would rather see revolution over evolution, & the weird ties to Google & hosting the project Microsoft GitHub rub me wrong.
  
  but they are working on their own vcs. I think git compatibility is not much more than a convenience in the long term.
- Oh Yeah I like Pijul as well & I fully agree with your point of breaking the Git Hedgemony
  BTW, tell me more about Darcs I want to know EDIT: Boy GIT-Fanboys are clearly mad about other VCSs existing😅
  
  Darcs is sort of like Pijul before Pijul. It is a little slower, but might not even affect you at your project size, but what it has instead is a longer history with more tooling & support—on the CLI, support from package managers, forge options. It ends up being my preferred option just for this reason even if Pijul has better performance, handles binary files, & the identity server is novel.
  
  Is there any good videos on Darcs that I can watch ?
  
  Probably the most notable modern video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XQz-x6wAWk
  
  Thanks

122 comments