4 ms·

Seems like Fossil is more like an alternative to GitHub than Git. Fossil not only tracks code changes but team chat, bug tracking, wikis, etc.

by umvi 5y ago

leetrout 5y ago
Yes and no. It tracks the issues in the source repo. Everything is an artifact and some artifacts are bugs, technotes, etc https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/fileformat.wiki https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/fileformat.wiki This is from the same person who made SQLite.
simonw 5y ago
That's the "batteries included" bit!
- pvg 5y ago
  That's something the submitter made up in the title, it's not how Fossil self-describes.
josephg 5y ago
Fossil is an alternative to both git (source control) and github (issues, etc). I think its brilliant having issues tracked in fossil. Part of the promise of github is that the user is in control, since your computer is a first-class citizen of a repository. You have all the code, and all the history on your computer. You can use github, but you don't need github, since its just another node in git's distributed network. But that promise falls apart with issues and pull requests. Issues and pull requests don't get replicated by git. If github goes down, you can't interact with issues. If github ever turns evil, or you decide you want to self host git over ssh or something, you lose the history of all your issues and conversations. Git is a distributed, replicated data format. Why are issues fully centralized? Its bizarre - You can have a project on both github and gitlab. And you can replicate commits to both. But you can't replicate issues using the same mechanism. Fossil is far from perfect, but I think putting the issues and stuff into the repository itself is brilliant.
- benatkin 5y ago
  That's true. People imagine GitHub provides git, but that's the wrong way of seeing it. They do provide it on your server but the git running on your own computer is from the git project. GitHub does help significantly with the git project, though. Here's git's official website, which is very good, and was started by a GitHub cofounder, but is run by the git project rather than GitHub: https://git-scm.com/ https://git-scm.com/
- Jach 5y ago
  You're overstating the risks a bit and it's not great to posit implausible motives and means for bad outcomes... Like, Fossil devs could "turn evil", and ship an update that destroys your museum and any copies it can find. Github could "turn evil" without notice, and permanently nuke all of someone or some org's accounts for no good reason and yes, that'd catch a lot of people with their pants down. It's better to first focus on outcomes, not means. Of course anyone actually concerned about losing their github issue data (or having their museums corrupted) should at least be making backups. (And it's not exactly an implausible outcome on its own, you can think of a variety of means that achieve it and discover one may be rather more likely for your situation, like if I was a Russian in Russia right now I'd have already made arrangements in case GH changes their mind or is legally forced to drop the ban hammer.) The desire to move off github (and therefore any additional services besides hosting you were using, which issues are just one -- new ones keep getting added to try and cement your dependence) is something more worthwhile of thought than the idea of github turning evil. Fortunately that desire is an actual thing that's very common, or at least the desire to not be wholly dependent, and is why many people don't even use github issues to begin with even if they use github itself for hosting (or some other non-issues features). So there's not a big problem, and even if you start with using github issues, there are various migration tools to move github issues out to [alternative]. (And of course github issues have their own merits, people frequently want to switch to them! So similar migration tools exist to move from [alternative] to github issues, I wrote one for Jira years ago.) It is brilliant to integrate things with the decentralized source control itself, you get free backups and deciding to migrate to something different in the future is easy, I think it's an overlooked approach for a lot of people. (It seems less overlooked when it comes to documentation in various forms like developer-focused .md files, or broader full static html websites which github can conveniently host for you.) Fossil is well-worth investigating for this free integration to see if it meets one's needs. But of course nothing stops you from doing it with git yourself in various ways. For personal projects, I'm pretty satisfied with being as minimal as having an issues.md file and moving things to an issues-closed.md file when I close one. I've also used the git-issue extension (https://github.com/dspinellis/git-issue https://github.com/dspinellis/git-issue -- see also its bottom section of Related Work). But despite its brilliance it's not always the right approach. It's very easy and reasonable to want more than what is realistic for something deeply integrated with the source code itself to provide, if only for inherent conflicts of desire, let alone any question of manpower. There are very good reasons to have entirely separate (and even multiple-of-kind partially overlapping/integrating/cross-referencing) systems for source code management, issue tracking, code review, forums, IM communication, wikis, public websites, docs (of whatever kinds and types for various audiences and authors, or public or not, or team-level spikes or plannings or retrospectives)... One aspect of Fossil I found weak was its user capabilities (https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/caps/ https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/caps/ -- no custom user categories alone is a deal breaker for so many things) but flaws in the execution of a fully integrated thing isn't really my point, my point here again is just that full integration despite its overlooked benefits and brilliance when applied to certain things is still not necessarily the right choice for something.
philwelch 5y ago
This has always been my #1 reservation about it. Seems like a weird degree of feature creep to me.
- wyoung2 5y ago
  When Fossil didn't have those features, the frequent complaints were that Fossil doesn't have those features, and that's why they had to keep using $INERTIA_SOURCE. Now that it has those features, it's the reason not to move to it? I see. :) All of these features cooperate and serve the same goal: coordinate the work product of people on a project, in a distributed fashion. One path to that is the nearly fully centralized model of GitHub. Another is the VCS + mailing list + bug tracker + wiki path, which requires considerable admin resources to manage, and at the end of the day is a pile of barely-cooperating services. Fossil's path is to put them all into one place so they all work properly together. You can reference ticket IDs from a forum post. You can point to a section of the timeline from a wiki article. You can create diagrams in Pikchr format that live as version-controlled text in the repo and reference them from commit messages. You can generate HTML diffs and include them into the body of a Markdown chat posting for discussion of a proposed change before committing it. Etc., etc. It's all communication, which you need when you have multiple people working on a project, especially across time zones.
  - throwaway81523 5y ago
    Fossil is ideologically opposed to rebasing which makes it (according to its own docs iirc) not so good for large teams, since the repo is full of tons of useless little commits that git users squash out before merging.
  - philwelch 5y ago
    In my defense, I don’t ever recall a time that Fossil didn’t have all those features. Edit: I even have receipts. Me, 11 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2524574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2524574 > Am I the only one who's actively suspicious about this kind of thing? With Git, I can use whatever wiki, ticketing, documentation, and blog features I want. I don't want my VCS to be a Lotus Notes for software development.

Seems like Fossil is more like an alternative to GitHub than Git. Fossil not only tracks code changes but team chat, bug tracking, wikis, etc.

by umvi 5y ago

Seems like Fossil is more like an alternative to GitHub than Git. Fossil not only tracks code changes but team chat, bug tracking, wikis, etc.

leetrout 5y ago

Yes and no. It tracks the issues in the source repo. Everything is an artifact and some artifacts are bugs, technotes, etc https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/fileformat.wiki https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/fileformat.wiki This is from the same person who made SQLite.

simonw 5y ago

That's the "batteries included" bit!

pvg 5y ago
That's something the submitter made up in the title, it's not how Fossil self-describes.

josephg 5y ago

Fossil is an alternative to both git (source control) and github (issues, etc). I think its brilliant having issues tracked in fossil. Part of the promise of github is that the user is in control, since your computer is a first-class citizen of a repository. You have all the code, and all the history on your computer. You can use github, but you don't need github, since its just another node in git's distributed network. But that promise falls apart with issues and pull requests. Issues and pull requests don't get replicated by git. If github goes down, you can't interact with issues. If github ever turns evil, or you decide you want to self host git over ssh or something, you lose the history of all your issues and conversations. Git is a distributed, replicated data format. Why are issues fully centralized? Its bizarre - You can have a project on both github and gitlab. And you can replicate commits to both. But you can't replicate issues using the same mechanism. Fossil is far from perfect, but I think putting the issues and stuff into the repository itself is brilliant.

benatkin 5y ago
That's true. People imagine GitHub provides git, but that's the wrong way of seeing it. They do provide it on your server but the git running on your own computer is from the git project. GitHub does help significantly with the git project, though. Here's git's official website, which is very good, and was started by a GitHub cofounder, but is run by the git project rather than GitHub: https://git-scm.com/ https://git-scm.com/
Jach 5y ago
You're overstating the risks a bit and it's not great to posit implausible motives and means for bad outcomes... Like, Fossil devs could "turn evil", and ship an update that destroys your museum and any copies it can find. Github could "turn evil" without notice, and permanently nuke all of someone or some org's accounts for no good reason and yes, that'd catch a lot of people with their pants down. It's better to first focus on outcomes, not means. Of course anyone actually concerned about losing their github issue data (or having their museums corrupted) should at least be making backups. (And it's not exactly an implausible outcome on its own, you can think of a variety of means that achieve it and discover one may be rather more likely for your situation, like if I was a Russian in Russia right now I'd have already made arrangements in case GH changes their mind or is legally forced to drop the ban hammer.) The desire to move off github (and therefore any additional services besides hosting you were using, which issues are just one -- new ones keep getting added to try and cement your dependence) is something more worthwhile of thought than the idea of github turning evil. Fortunately that desire is an actual thing that's very common, or at least the desire to not be wholly dependent, and is why many people don't even use github issues to begin with even if they use github itself for hosting (or some other non-issues features). So there's not a big problem, and even if you start with using github issues, there are various migration tools to move github issues out to [alternative]. (And of course github issues have their own merits, people frequently want to switch to them! So similar migration tools exist to move from [alternative] to github issues, I wrote one for Jira years ago.) It is brilliant to integrate things with the decentralized source control itself, you get free backups and deciding to migrate to something different in the future is easy, I think it's an overlooked approach for a lot of people. (It seems less overlooked when it comes to documentation in various forms like developer-focused .md files, or broader full static html websites which github can conveniently host for you.) Fossil is well-worth investigating for this free integration to see if it meets one's needs. But of course nothing stops you from doing it with git yourself in various ways. For personal projects, I'm pretty satisfied with being as minimal as having an issues.md file and moving things to an issues-closed.md file when I close one. I've also used the git-issue extension (https://github.com/dspinellis/git-issue https://github.com/dspinellis/git-issue -- see also its bottom section of Related Work). But despite its brilliance it's not always the right approach. It's very easy and reasonable to want more than what is realistic for something deeply integrated with the source code itself to provide, if only for inherent conflicts of desire, let alone any question of manpower. There are very good reasons to have entirely separate (and even multiple-of-kind partially overlapping/integrating/cross-referencing) systems for source code management, issue tracking, code review, forums, IM communication, wikis, public websites, docs (of whatever kinds and types for various audiences and authors, or public or not, or team-level spikes or plannings or retrospectives)... One aspect of Fossil I found weak was its user capabilities (https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/caps/ https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/caps/ -- no custom user categories alone is a deal breaker for so many things) but flaws in the execution of a fully integrated thing isn't really my point, my point here again is just that full integration despite its overlooked benefits and brilliance when applied to certain things is still not necessarily the right choice for something.

philwelch 5y ago

This has always been my #1 reservation about it. Seems like a weird degree of feature creep to me.

wyoung2 5y ago
When Fossil didn't have those features, the frequent complaints were that Fossil doesn't have those features, and that's why they had to keep using $INERTIA_SOURCE. Now that it has those features, it's the reason not to move to it? I see. :) All of these features cooperate and serve the same goal: coordinate the work product of people on a project, in a distributed fashion. One path to that is the nearly fully centralized model of GitHub. Another is the VCS + mailing list + bug tracker + wiki path, which requires considerable admin resources to manage, and at the end of the day is a pile of barely-cooperating services. Fossil's path is to put them all into one place so they all work properly together. You can reference ticket IDs from a forum post. You can point to a section of the timeline from a wiki article. You can create diagrams in Pikchr format that live as version-controlled text in the repo and reference them from commit messages. You can generate HTML diffs and include them into the body of a Markdown chat posting for discussion of a proposed change before committing it. Etc., etc. It's all communication, which you need when you have multiple people working on a project, especially across time zones.
- throwaway81523 5y ago
  Fossil is ideologically opposed to rebasing which makes it (according to its own docs iirc) not so good for large teams, since the repo is full of tons of useless little commits that git users squash out before merging.
- philwelch 5y ago
  In my defense, I don’t ever recall a time that Fossil didn’t have all those features. Edit: I even have receipts. Me, 11 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2524574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2524574 > Am I the only one who's actively suspicious about this kind of thing? With Git, I can use whatever wiki, ticketing, documentation, and blog features I want. I don't want my VCS to be a Lotus Notes for software development.