Artifact bd20a9934c56da1f3990edb0eddb606f11caf3e2

File www/qandc.wiki part of check-in [cbc8983685] - Documentation update: Add the "Questions and Criticisms" document in response to recent comments on reddit.com. by drh on 2008-10-06 00:31:23.

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<h1 align="center">Questions And Criticisms</h1>

<p>This page is a collection of real questions and criticisms that have been
raised against fossil together with responses from the program's author.</p>

<b>Fossil sounds like a lot of reinvention of the wheel.
Why create your own DVCS when you could have reused mercurial?</b>

<blockquote>
  I wrote it because none of the
  other available DVCSes met my needs.  If the other DVCSes do
  meet your needs, then you probably do not need fossil.  But they
  don't meet mine, and so fossil is necessary for me.

  Feature provided by fossil that one does not get with other
  DVCSes:

  <ol>
  <li> Integrated <a href="wikitheory.wiki">wiki</a>. </li>
  <li> Integrated <a href="bugtheory.wiki">bug tracking</a> </li>
  <li> Immutable artifacts </li>
  <li> self-contained, stand-alone executable </li>
  <li> simple, well-defined, 
       <a href="fileformat.wiki">enduring file format</a> </li>
  </ol>
</blockquote>

<b>Why should I use this rather than Trac?</b>

<blockquote>
  <ol>
  <li> Fossil is distributed.  You can view and/or edit tickets, wiki, and
       code while off network, then sync your changes later.  With Trac, you
       can only view and edit tickets and wiki while you are connected to
       the server. </li>
  <li> Fossil is lightweight and fully self-contained.  It is very easy 
       to setup on a low-resource machine. Fossil does not require an
       administator.</li>
  <li> Fossil integrates code versioning into the same repository with
       wiki and tickets.  There is nothing extra to add or install.
       Fossil is an all-in-one turnkey solution. </li>
  </ol>
</blockquote>

<b>Love the concept here. Anyone using this for real work yet?</b>

<blockquote>
Fossil is <a href="http://www.fossil-scm.org/">self-hosting</a>. 
In fact, this page was probably delivered
to your web-browser via a working fossil instance.  The same virtual
machine that hosts http://www.fossil-scm.org/
(a <a href="http://www.linode.com/">Linode 720</a>)
also hosts 24 other fossil repositories for various small projects.
The documentation files for 
<a href="http://www.sqlite.org/">SQLite</a> are hosted in a
fossil repository <a href="http://www.sqlite.org/docsrc/">here</a>,
for example.
Other projects are also adopting fossil.  But fossil does not yet have
the massive user base of git or mecurial.
</blockquote>

<b>Fossil looks like the bug tracker that would be in your 
Linksys Router's administration screen.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>I take a pragmatic approach to software: form follows functions.
To me, it is more important to have a highly reliable, fast, efficient,
enduring, and simple DVCS than one that looks pretty.</p>

<p>On the other hand, if you have patches that improve the apparance
of Fossil without seriously compromising its reliablity, performance,
an maintainability, I will be happy to accept them.  Fossil is
self-hosting.  Write to the maintainers for a password that will let
you push to the main fossil repository.</p>
</blockquote>

<b>It would be useful to have a separate application that
keeps the bug-tracking database in a versioned filed. That file can
then be pushed and pulled along with the rest repository.</b>

<blockquote>
<p>This addressed in the opening paragraphs of
the <a href="bugtheory.wiki">Bug-Tracking In Fossil</a> document.
</blockquote>

<b>Fossil is already the name of a plan9 versioned 
append-only filesystem.</b>

<blockquote>
I did not know that.  Perhaps they choose the name for the same reason that
I did: because a repository with immutable artifacts preserves
and excellent fossil record of a long-running project.
</blockquote>

<b>The idea of storing a repository in a binary blob like an
SQLite database terrifies me.</b>

<blockquote>
The use of SQLite to store the database is likely more stable and secure
than any other approach, due to the fact that SQLite is transactional.
Fossil also implements several internal
<a href="selfcheck.wiki">self-checks</a> to insure that no information
is every lost.  And, indeed, in over a year of operation, there have been
no reports of data loss due to a Fossil malfunction.
</blockquote>


<b>I am dubious of the benefits of including wikis and bug trackers
directly in the VCS - either they are under-featured compared to full
software like Trac, or the VCS is massively bloated compared to
Subversion or Bazaar.</b>

<blockquote>
<p>I have no doubt that Trac has many features that fossil lacks.  But that
is not the point.  Fossil has several key features that Trac lacks and that
the primary fossil author cannot live without:  most notably the fact that 
fossil supports disconnected operation.</p>

<p>As for bloat:  Fossil is a single fully self-contained executable.
You do not need any external packages in order to run fossil.  You do not
need diff, patch, merge, cvs, svn, rcs, python, perl, tcl, sqlite, or anything
else in order to run fossil.  Fossil runs just fine in a chroot jail all
by itself.  And the self-contained executable is much less than 1MB in size.
Fossil is the very opposite of bloat.</p>
</blockquote>


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