I would like to introduce you lovely OpenSource Lovers to a GIT-Alternative called FOSSIL that I also stumbled upon because of this Blog.<br> 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”<br> The person behind Fossil is the creator of SQLite, <u>Dr.Richard Hipp</u> & they even made other projects to support Fossil like a PIC-Like language called PikChr<br> Well just in case; here’s a list of difference between Git vs Fossil<br> & 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)

14 points
  • 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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3 points

I like Markdown so I’m gonna use it

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2 points

Cathedral-style coding isn’t very Open-Source

Cathedral vs bazaar is about development process, nothing to do with source code availability.

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2 points

This - cathedral style development absolutely is a valid way to create free software and I don’t believe Eric S. Raymond (the guy who, I believe, coined the term) claimed otherwise, only that the bazaar model was “better.” Maintaining a bazaar style project is work, and it’s work that easily leads to burnout. We should normalize the idea that you don’t need to commit to being an “open source maintainer” to release a free software project; it should be enough to just release the source code (with or without binaries).

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2 points

Make that Source Code With Binaries

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7 points

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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-3 points
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I’m not a part of the fossil community, also when none of the people here bother to properly check out the website & call it Ancient or see the why behind the tool & it’s development philosphy Yeah that pisses me off (So yeah I’ll “cool it” but it makes the GIT-community look like hostile hive)

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3 points

Why don’t you tell me some more about what you like about Fossil… I’m assuming you’ve used other version control systems - how would you compare the feeling of actually using it in a collaborative workflow? How did you even come across Fossil in the first place?

This is my first time hearing about it, so would love to hear more straight from an actual user.

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1 point

It can be carried around in your pocket & has the features of Github but open source Wiki, bug-tracker, ticketting, Forumn & even a chat for devs to use You can self-host it & it even runs on the most crappy internet Best part, it can track what you did in the past & stores in SQLite DB & can import & export to Git

Also I came across it via this blog

I like it even with the obvious flaws it has, plus it can be improved anyways

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3 points

I imagine the creator envisioned something like a package wiki/docs mixed with direct access to the source code.

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8 points

Learned fossil in college and I intensely disliked it

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1 point
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Why ? As in the intense dislike ?

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5 points

Didn’t like mixing issue tracking with vcs. I also didn’t like any VCS hahaha, I was just writing shit in literally notepad

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0 points

Oh ‽ well that I can relate to

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9 points

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

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1 point

Look at the bottom

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2 points
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3 points

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

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0 points

There are tabs above like a browser

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

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18 points

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.

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4 points

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

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6 points

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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50 points

What about git needs replacement?

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3 points
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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.

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14 points

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

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3 points

Nah, git has a bad command line UX. Which is why the developers are working to make it better, i.e. moving from checkout to switch.

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7 points
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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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1 point

does he? i was under the impression that linus considers it just as stupid as everybody else and its existence is somewhat unsettlingly like a separate organism that lives in our collective brain activity…

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11 points

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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11 points

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.

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-3 points
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5 points

I must be missing whan you mean by remote/server since pull, fetch, push… All interact with remote copies of the repo.

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0 points

As in it’s literally Github-in-a-box you can spin up a web-server with a command<br> (Imagine a git serve command that launches your GitHub instance)

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10 points

Isn’t that by design? I believe the intention was to offload that capability to an existing solution, usually ssh.

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-8 points

Yeah & for that we have to deal withe Dependency hell Look at the size of Fossil & compare

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29 points

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

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