Artifact 68895a10cd35e9fca0d98049c5e7e49766e68512
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www/index.html
part of check-in
[dbda8d6ce9]
- Initial check-in of m1 sources.
by
drh on
2007-07-21 14:10:57.
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<title>Fossil SCM Homepage</title>
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<h1>Fossil - A Software Configuration Management System</h1>
<p>
This is a preliminary homepage for a new software configuration
management system called "Fossil".
The code is currently under development, and has been for about
a year. Nothing is available for download or inspection
as of this writing (2007-06-09).
But the system is self-hosting now.
Hopefully something will be available soon.
</p>
<p>Distinctive features of Fossil:</p>
<ul>
<li>Supports disconnected, distributed development (like
<a href="http://kerneltrap.org/node/4982">git</a>,
<a href="http://www.venge.net/monotone/">monotone</a>,
<a href="http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/index.cgi">mercurial</a>, or
<a href="http://www.bitkeeper.com/">bitkeeper</a>)
or tightly coupled client/server operation (like
<a href="http://www.nongnu.org/cvs/">CVS</a> or
<a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/">subversion</a>)
or both at the same time</li>
<li>Integrated bug tracking and wiki, along the lines of
<a href="http://www.cvstrac.org/">CVSTrac</a> and
<a href="http://www.edgewall.com/trac/">Trac</a>.</li>
<li>Built-in web interface that supports deep archaeological digs through
historical source code.</li>
<li>All network communication via HTTP (so that everything works
from behind restrictive firewalls).</li>
<li>Everything included in a single self-contained executable -
trivial to install</li>
<li>Server runs as <a href="http://www.w3.org/CGI/">CGI</a>, using
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/inetd">inetd</a> or
<a href="http://www.xinetd.org/">xinetd</a> or using its own built-in,
standalone web server.</li>
<li>The entire project contained in single disk file (which also
happens to be an <a href="http://www.sqlite.org/">SQLite</a> database.)</li>
<li>Self sign-up (at the administrators discretion) including the
ability to support secure anonymous check-ins (also optional).</li>
<li>Digital signatures on all files, versions,
<a href="http://wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki">wiki</a> pages,
trouble tickets, etc. Everything is digitally signed.</li>
<li>Trivial to setup and administer</li>
<li>Files and versions identified by their
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-1">SHA-256</a> signature expressed
in <a href="base32.html">base-32 notation</a>.
Any unique prefix is sufficient to identify a file
or version - usually the first 4 or 5 characters suffice.</li>
<li>Automatic <a href="selfcheck.html">self-check</a>
on repository changes makes it exceedingly
unlikely that data will ever be lost because of a software bug.</li>
</ul>
<p>Goals of fossil:</p>
<ul>
<li>Fossil should be ridiculously easy to install and operate.</li>
<li>With fossil, it should be possible (and easy) to set up a project
on an inexpensive shared-hosting ISP
(example: <a href="http://www.he.net/hosting.html">Hurricane Electric</a>)
that provides nothing more than web space and CGI capability.</li>
<li>Fossil should provide in-depth historical and status information about the
project through a web interface</li>
<li>The integration of <a href="http://wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki">Wiki</a>
and the ability to safely support anonymous check-in are features sometimes
described as
<a href="http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html">Web 2.0</a>.
Fossil attempts to better capture "collective intelligence" and
"the wisdom of crowds" by opening up write access to the masses.</li>
</ul>
<p>Links:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="pop.html">Principals Of Operation</a></li>
<li>The <a href="base32.html">base-32 encoding</a> mechanism used
by Fossil.</li>
<li>The <a href="fileformat.html">file format</a> used by every content
file stored in the repository.</li>
</ul>
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