There are plenty of open-source version control systems available
on the internet these days. What makes Fossil worthy of attention?
1. Bug Tracking And Wiki - In addition to doing distributed
version control like Git and Mercurial, Fossil also supports
distributed bug tracking and distributed wiki all in a single
integrated package.
2. Web Interface - Fossil has a built-in and easy-to-use web
interface that simplifies project tracking and promotes situational
awareness. Simply type "fossil ui" from within any check-out
and Fossil automatically opens your web browser in a page that
gives detailed history and status information on that project.
3. Autosync - Fossil supports "autosync" mode which helps to
keep projects moving forward by reducing the amount of needless
forking and merging often associated distributed projects.
4. Self-Contained - Fossil is a single stand-alone executable
that contains everything needed to do configuration management.
Installation is trivial: simply download a precompiled binary
for Linux, Mac, or Windows and put it on your $PATH. Easy-to-compile
source code is available for users on other platforms. Fossil
sources are also mostly self-contained, requiring only the "zlib"
library and the standard C library to build.
5. Simple Networking - Fossil uses plain old HTTP (with proxy
support) for all network communications, meaning that it works
fine from behind restrictive firewalls. The protocol is bandwidth
efficient to the point that Fossil can be used comfortably over
a dial-up internet connection.
6. CGI Enabled - No server is required to use fossil. But a
server does make collaboration easier. Fossil supports three
different yet simple server configurations. The most popular is
a 2-line CGI script. This is the approach used by the self-hosting
fossil repositories.
7. Robust & Reliable - Fossil stores content in an SQLite database
so that transactions are atomic even if interrupted by a power
loss or system crash. Furthermore, automatic self-checks verify
that all aspects of the repository are consistent prior to each
commit. In over two years of operation, no work has ever been
lost after having been committed to a Fossil repository.
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