blog.s11n.net

The Fossil version control system

November 27, 2007 on 2:58 am | In General | 1 Comment

While doing my semi-weekly perusal of sqlite.org, i came across a link to an interesting new tool, the Fossil version control system:

http://fossil-scm.hwaci.com/

It is authored primarily by sqlite’s Dr. Richard Hipp and is licensed under the GNU GPL Version 2.

What the world needs now is yet another source control system, right? While still apparently quite young, this project has some interesting, even compelling, features, and it seems to be ready for use in “smaller” projects.

Fossil stores a source repository as a single sqlite database file. That is, you can copy around the whole repo as a single file. Probably the single most interesting feature of Fossil is that it has an embedded mini web server which you can use to browse a repository database:

fossil server my-repo.fsl

Once you do that, you can browse to localhost, port 8080 (configurable via a command-line option) and view the repository, set up access permissions, or even download zip files of specific versions. It even has a built-in wiki(!!!), and plans are underway to add a built-in bug tracking system. While i’m not a big fan of wikis, having that capability built right in to the repository (and stored along with it) is downright frigging cool.

If you would like to host your repository on the web but don’t have a server where you can run arbitrary servers (most of us don’t), then running Fossil as a CGI script is trivial (requires a two-line script per repository, and most hosting providers allow the installation of CGI scripts). As an example of what that looks like:

http://www.hwaci.com/cgi-bin/fossil/timeline

For someone who wants to dive right in and try out Fossil, the quickstart guide:

http://fossil-scm.hwaci.com/quickstart.html

can get you up and running in under 10 or 15 minutes. (Achtung: it assumes/requires experience with source control systems, such as CVS or Subversion.)

This is certainly a piece of software i will keep an eye on, as its potential utility, especially for small-scale projects, is enormous.