Fossil - A Software Configuration Management System

This is a preliminary homepage for a new software configuration management system called "Fossil". The system is self-hosting on two separate servers. You can download the lastest sources compile it yourself using the instructions below.

Design Goals For Fossil:

• Supports disconnected, distributed development (like git, monotone, mercurial, or bitkeeper) or client/server operation (like CVS or subversion) or both at the same time
• Integrated bug tracking and wiki, along the lines of CVSTrac and Trac.
• Built-in web interface that supports deep archaeological digs through historical source code.
• All network communication via HTTP (so that everything works from behind restrictive firewalls).
• Everything included in a single self-contained executable - trivial to install
• Server runs as CGI, using inetd or xinetd or using its own built-in, standalone web server.
• An entire project contained in single disk file (which also happens to be an SQLite database.)
• Trivial to setup and administer
• Files and versions are identified by their SHA1 signature. Any unique prefix is sufficient to identify a file or version - usually the first 4 or 5 characters suffice.
• The file format is trival and requires nothing more complex than a text editor and the "sha1sum" command-line utility to decode.
• Automatic self-check on repository changes makes it exceedingly unlikely that data will ever be lost because of a software bug.

Objectives Of Fossil:

• Fossil should be ridiculously easy to install and operate.
• With fossil, it should be possible (and easy) to set up a project on an inexpensive shared-hosting ISP (example: Hurricane Electric) that provides nothing more than web space and CGI capability. Here is a demo.
• Fossil should provide in-depth historical and status information about the project through a web interface
• The integration of Wiki and the ability to safely support anonymous check-in are features sometimes described as Web 2.0. Fossil attempts to better capture "collective intelligence" and "the wisdom of crowds" by opening up write access to the masses.

Other Links:

• The concepts behind fossil
• Building And Installing
• Quick Start guide to using fossil
• Principles Of Operation
• The automatic self-check mechanism helps insure project integrity.
• The file format used by every content file stored in the repository.
• The format of deltas used to efficiently store changes between file revisions.
• The encoder algorithm used to efficiently generate deltas.
• The synchronization protocol.
• There is a mailing list available for discussing fossil issues.
• The self-hosting fossil wiki.

Competing Projects:

• DITrace - A Distributed Issue Tracker
• DisTract - Another distributed issue tracker based on monotone.
• Monotone - distributed SCM in a single-file executable with a single-file SQLite database repository.