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FOSSIL: A complete Git alternative (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by MITM0@lemmy.world to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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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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[-] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 55 points 2 weeks ago

What about git needs replacement?

[-] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 30 points 2 weeks ago

Something new is new, and apparently that's all tha-- SQUIRREL!

[-] Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 2 weeks ago

Seems like a historic artefact to me as well. And one of their mentioned points was "no sync via http" which even for 2006 makes me... hesitant.

And their history section ends in 2007, couldn't find a feature comparison in their quick start guide.

[-] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Git is far from user friendly but that's a design consideration from a decentralized architecture. Fossil will have the same considerations. People need to learn how to use Git.

The problem is there's only one person who really knows how to use it: Linus.

[-] secret300@lemmy.sdf.org 14 points 2 weeks ago

I'm so fuckin tired of hearing x is user unfriendly, it's not intuitive enough.

Like fuckin yeah. Sometimes you have to actually learn something new to use something new when I first started driving it wasn't user friendly. I had to learn how to do it

[-] pupbiru@aussie.zone 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

git is exactly as unfriendly as a distributed source control system that doesn’t shy away from power user commands needs to be

… sure it’s difficult to comprehend, but yknow what’s worse? getting into a bullshit situation and having broken garbage repos in every other “user friendly” system on the planet

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[-] silasmariner@programming.dev 11 points 2 weeks ago

I remember Linus saying in an interview that he'd only really been involved in git for the first 6 months or so and that the other devs had managed it without him since then. This makes sense - Linus's creations aren't successful because he's the only person who understands them, they're successful because there are so many other collaborators on them.

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[-] toastal@lemmy.ml 25 points 2 weeks ago

I support reconsidering Git VCS hegemony. Darcs & Pijul too for DVCS.

[-] nimpnin@sopuli.xyz 23 points 2 weeks ago

Darcs does not require a central server, and works perfectly in offline mode.

Git can be used that way too. Am I missing something?

[-] einkorn@feddit.org 27 points 2 weeks ago

No, you are not. People regularly equate Git and GitHub, though.

[-] PropaGandalf@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago

no, this is exactly what git does

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[-] toastal@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

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.

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[-] PHLAK@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

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.

[-] PropaGandalf@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago

dont forget about jujutsu

[-] 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 2 weeks ago

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...

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[-] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 25 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

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.

[-] clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 weeks ago

"NIH"?

[-] fluckx@lemmy.world 25 points 2 weeks ago

I think "Not Invented Here". Meaning he wants to build everything himself from scratch despite there being alternatives he can use instead.

E.g.: Building your own httprequest library rather than using the existing one which is good enough.

[-] clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 weeks ago

That makes sense, thank you.

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[-] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 weeks ago

Not Invented Here, the urge to rebuild the wheel because someone else did it.

[-] boonhet@lemm.ee 8 points 2 weeks ago

I've worked with NIH VCS. Never again lol, I'll stick to git until something else becomes so universally recognized that people en masse start jumping ship.

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[-] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 15 points 2 weeks ago

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.

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[-] unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 2 weeks ago

Spent 5 minutes on the website and couldn't get a peek at their code... The most fundamental thing, IMO.

[-] lime@feddit.nu 19 points 2 weeks ago

fossil is made by the sqlite devs, for development of sqlite. this is not some amateur operation.

also, it's by the sqlite people, so expect the code to be... odd.

[-] MITM0@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

& The code behind Linux isn't ? People back then did some REAL sorcery with coding

[-] lime@feddit.nu 6 points 2 weeks ago

back then? both codebases are fully modern. its more that sqlite uses a style that differs from the accepted norm quite a bit. that, and they don't accept contributions.

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[-] Im_old@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

it's not the most intuitive interface but there you go: https://fossil-scm.org/home/tree?name=src

[-] RenardDesMers@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Wow C, CSS and JS files at the same level. You don't see this every day

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[-] MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 weeks ago

Learned fossil in college and I intensely disliked it

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[-] Rogue@feddit.uk 9 points 2 weeks ago

This thread might be the fastest I've ever seen discussion devolve from "that could be interesting" to just incomprehensible screaming.

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[-] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 7 points 2 weeks ago

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.

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[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 weeks ago

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.

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[-] Mwa@lemm.ee 5 points 2 weeks ago

Tho we also got mercurial right?

[-] CodexArcanum@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

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...

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