[Nix-dev] An interview to the fossil creator about fossil

[Lluís Batlle i Rossell]

On Sat, Aug 07, 2010 at 03:49:13PM +0400, Michael Raskin wrote:
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> On 08/07/2010 01:56 AM, Lluís Batlle i Rossell wrote:
> > On IRC #nixos we talked about fossil, so here you have an interview to its
> > creator about it:
> > http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/2010/07/bsdtalk194-fossil-scm-with-d-richard.html
> > 
> > He explains it comparing to other systems.
> 
> The fun thing is that he says very little about pure SCM side comparison
> (he talks more about a full-package vs SCM); and doesn't even mention
> standalone wiki-over-DVCS/bug-tracking-over-DVCS solutions.

Although Fossil comes with bug-tracking and wiki, when I sent the link it was
not what I had in mind as relevant in the talk.

Some of the points I like of Fossil, then:
- It does not allow the kind of git history rewriting. Thus, I favour the use of
  more branches with full history keeping instead of "rebase -i; push".
- It's written in C and the author means it to work everywhere without being a
  pain to install. From everywhere it may mean complicated platforms as Windows,
  Mac OS X or linux on the Ben Nanonote. For me it's a big plus.
- The bug tracking and the wiki do not clutter the commit log. They are meant to
  be branch-agnostic, and be for the whole repository regardless of the branch,
  in opposite (in advantage) to other in-VCS solutions.
- It looks like using few disk space and few bandwidth - for me this looks as
  scaling well.
- Autosync mode allows some kind of centralized VCS behaviour, as far as the
  connection to 'the server' can be established.
- I find it far easier to use than git
- Allows per commit propagated and not propagated tags and properties, although
  it still does not offer a complex search and usage of them. For this monotone
  clearly wins.
- The Web UI gives an additional improvement over the console interface for
  free, at every installation of fossil, without the need of additional
  software.
- I find it far easier to handle than git (and it's not that I don't use git)

What I don't like much:
- I have not understood the history keeping of the UI 'Edit check-in' features,
  that allow a rewriting of the comment, and some other things.
- Some operations can be done only through the web ui, which is both thought as
  a normal UI for local usage, and as a public web server. Then, tickets can
  only be managed through the web ui. "fossil ui" starts the server and tells
  firefox to open that page, in that single command. I'd like a full featured
  command line.
- I still have to see migration scripts other than CVS to Fossil.

Urkud talked about the linking between different projects, but I don't know what
was he thinking about. Urkud, can you explain what you had in mind? Do you mean
the git ability to pull from a repository *only* commits for a single branch,
instead of pulling all?

Related to 'git', I've found this days how difficult it is to cross-build perl,
and I feel it difficult for me to accept more things perl-based, having other
not-worse solutions around. :) 

>From the talk, I also did not know there are companies any use of GPLed
programs. Interesting.

Regards,
Lluís.