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> Git will be hard to beat. With the latest kurfuffle at Github, I've started moving to fossil. Having everything, wiki, pull requests, etc. as part of the rep

> Git will be hard to beat. With the latest kurfuffle at Github, I've started moving to fossil. Having everything, wiki, pull requests, etc. as part of the repo is looking like a good move. Why let yet another corporation have control over something they should have never been given? https://fossil-scm.org https://fossil-scm.org

andrewzah 6y ago
github != git ... I'm not sure why people strongly conflate these two so much. It would be equally as valid to self-host gitea/gogs/sourcehut/gitlab and/or an issue tracker of your choice, which arguably is preferable to adopting a completely different tool over what is a provider issue.
- reificator 6y ago
  While that's a common conflation I don't think the GP was doing that. While I tend to self-host git, I can see the value they're claiming fossil has. Whether self-hosted git or hosting on Github, your issue trackers and such are typically separate from your main repository. Most platforms offer wikis as a side-by-side repository so that should be easy to move, but the rest is at the whims of the platform. The GP is claiming they moved to fossil because the one repository contains all of this data.
- wtracy 6y ago
  I think minerjoe is trying to emphasize that fossil has all the features of GitHub included in the VCS itself, eliminating the need for any of the tools you listed above. I haven't followed Fossil, so hearing that it includes things like a wiki is news to me.
- dan-robertson 6y ago
  I think all git has going for it is its existing inertia and GitHub. I think the foundations were a bigger deal when git was newer. Other DVCSes have decent foundations. Going against git is an atrocious user interface (if it were good then [1] would be neither funny nor sad). Most people just memorise a few commands and if they stop working they transfer their changes elsewhere, delete the repo, and start again. Sometimes a team will have a “git expert” who has merely memorised a few more commands and is better able to get a repo out of a broken state. Git fails badly at an important for a developer tool: largely getting out of the way. [1] https://git-man-page-generator.lokaltog.net/ https://git-man-page-generator.lokaltog.net/
  - reificator 6y ago
    You'll never hear me say that git's interface is good, but this seems to be blowing things way out of proportion. I haven't seen someone blow up and recreate a git repo in maybe a decade. I've definitely pulled out the BFG here and there to clean up credentials but that's an issue in any VCS. Maybe I'm biased because I'm "better able to get a repo out of a broken state", but for the record it's definitely not because I've "memorised a few more commands".
  - theon144 6y ago
    Your attitude seems to mirror this xkcd https://xkcd.com/1597/ https://xkcd.com/1597/ and I honestly never understood it. I'm by no means a git expert (I've actually just recently learned about bisect for instance), but I have never in my entire career been in a state where I'd just delete the repo and recreate it from scratch. I've only ever used a handful of commands, the most advanced of which could be probably considered `reflog` when I wanted to revert some changes; or `rebase` (because strictly speaking, it is more complex than merge I guess), but I never ran a command I did not understand or had to memorize. I actually do share the sentiment about the tool getting out of your way, and my knee-jerk reaction to learning about git internals is just repulsion, because you're right! I'm not there to tinker around with version control, I'm there to solve problems. That said, I've never felt like Git got in my way.
    - sterlind 6y ago
      I nearly did once, because I couldn't stage a file. Git's content-hash store had gotten corrupted, so the object for the staged blob had a bunch of zeros in it and didn't match its sha. That was more the filesystem's fault than Git's, though.
    - andrewzah 6y ago
      I find the vast majority of complaints come from people who refuse to put any time into learning a mildly complex tool, and thus I have no sympathy for them. The documentation is right there in your terminal, in addition to many websites, videos, and books. The one and only time I messed up a repo beyond repair was when I deleted some git pack files while trying to delete some binary files from the git history. This is known as user error. In my day to day use I find that I rarely have to venture beyond rebase, bisect, reflog, cherry-pick, and the standard commands.
- badsectoracula 6y ago
  minerjoe is mentioning Fossil specifically because unlike Git it also provides the features (in a broad sense) that GitHub provides (wiki, bug tracker, discussion forum, news/blog, "released" files and of course version control) while remaining fully distributed - these are stored and versioned as part of the repository itself. As a nice bonus Fossil is a single executable/binary file you can drop anywhere and can act as both the CLI for working with the repository and as the web backend with a bunch of ways to access it including CGI, it's own web server or even as a fake script parser (you can upload the linux binary to any shared host that supports custom script parsers -many do- and use a "script" with a shebang that calls the binary with the path to the repository file, thus allowing you to use Fossil with shared hosting services that do not even know about it).
deleted 6y ago
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swiley 6y ago
>Why let yet another corporation have control over something they should have never been given? I'm pretty sure github doesn't control git.
- minerjoe 6y ago
  That's not what I was implying. They have control over the pull-requests, the wiki, and all the other meta information.

andrewzah 6y ago

github != git ... I'm not sure why people strongly conflate these two so much. It would be equally as valid to self-host gitea/gogs/sourcehut/gitlab and/or an issue tracker of your choice, which arguably is preferable to adopting a completely different tool over what is a provider issue.

reificator 6y ago
While that's a common conflation I don't think the GP was doing that. While I tend to self-host git, I can see the value they're claiming fossil has. Whether self-hosted git or hosting on Github, your issue trackers and such are typically separate from your main repository. Most platforms offer wikis as a side-by-side repository so that should be easy to move, but the rest is at the whims of the platform. The GP is claiming they moved to fossil because the one repository contains all of this data.
wtracy 6y ago
I think minerjoe is trying to emphasize that fossil has all the features of GitHub included in the VCS itself, eliminating the need for any of the tools you listed above. I haven't followed Fossil, so hearing that it includes things like a wiki is news to me.
dan-robertson 6y ago
I think all git has going for it is its existing inertia and GitHub. I think the foundations were a bigger deal when git was newer. Other DVCSes have decent foundations. Going against git is an atrocious user interface (if it were good then [1] would be neither funny nor sad). Most people just memorise a few commands and if they stop working they transfer their changes elsewhere, delete the repo, and start again. Sometimes a team will have a “git expert” who has merely memorised a few more commands and is better able to get a repo out of a broken state. Git fails badly at an important for a developer tool: largely getting out of the way. [1] https://git-man-page-generator.lokaltog.net/ https://git-man-page-generator.lokaltog.net/
- reificator 6y ago
  You'll never hear me say that git's interface is good, but this seems to be blowing things way out of proportion. I haven't seen someone blow up and recreate a git repo in maybe a decade. I've definitely pulled out the BFG here and there to clean up credentials but that's an issue in any VCS. Maybe I'm biased because I'm "better able to get a repo out of a broken state", but for the record it's definitely not because I've "memorised a few more commands".
- theon144 6y ago
  Your attitude seems to mirror this xkcd https://xkcd.com/1597/ https://xkcd.com/1597/ and I honestly never understood it. I'm by no means a git expert (I've actually just recently learned about bisect for instance), but I have never in my entire career been in a state where I'd just delete the repo and recreate it from scratch. I've only ever used a handful of commands, the most advanced of which could be probably considered `reflog` when I wanted to revert some changes; or `rebase` (because strictly speaking, it is more complex than merge I guess), but I never ran a command I did not understand or had to memorize. I actually do share the sentiment about the tool getting out of your way, and my knee-jerk reaction to learning about git internals is just repulsion, because you're right! I'm not there to tinker around with version control, I'm there to solve problems. That said, I've never felt like Git got in my way.
  - sterlind 6y ago
    I nearly did once, because I couldn't stage a file. Git's content-hash store had gotten corrupted, so the object for the staged blob had a bunch of zeros in it and didn't match its sha. That was more the filesystem's fault than Git's, though.
  - andrewzah 6y ago
    I find the vast majority of complaints come from people who refuse to put any time into learning a mildly complex tool, and thus I have no sympathy for them. The documentation is right there in your terminal, in addition to many websites, videos, and books. The one and only time I messed up a repo beyond repair was when I deleted some git pack files while trying to delete some binary files from the git history. This is known as user error. In my day to day use I find that I rarely have to venture beyond rebase, bisect, reflog, cherry-pick, and the standard commands.
badsectoracula 6y ago
minerjoe is mentioning Fossil specifically because unlike Git it also provides the features (in a broad sense) that GitHub provides (wiki, bug tracker, discussion forum, news/blog, "released" files and of course version control) while remaining fully distributed - these are stored and versioned as part of the repository itself. As a nice bonus Fossil is a single executable/binary file you can drop anywhere and can act as both the CLI for working with the repository and as the web backend with a bunch of ways to access it including CGI, it's own web server or even as a fake script parser (you can upload the linux binary to any shared host that supports custom script parsers -many do- and use a "script" with a shebang that calls the binary with the path to the repository file, thus allowing you to use Fossil with shared hosting services that do not even know about it).

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

swiley 6y ago

>Why let yet another corporation have control over something they should have never been given? I'm pretty sure github doesn't control git.

minerjoe 6y ago
That's not what I was implying. They have control over the pull-requests, the wiki, and all the other meta information.