<story><title>The Fossil distributed version control system</title><url>https://fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>oomkiller</author><text>This may be helpful to you: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sqlite.org&amp;#x2F;whynotgit.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sqlite.org&amp;#x2F;whynotgit.html&lt;/a&gt;, especially the links to other comparisons at the very bottom.</text></item><item><author>avar</author><text>I wish there was some post in the same vein as &amp;quot;Repository Formats Matter&amp;quot; comparing Git and Fossil. I.e. not one that describes differences in incidental UI features and how they happen to be exposed to the user &lt;i&gt;now&lt;/i&gt;, but what the intrinsic differences are that make certain things intrinsically hard or impossible in one of the two systems.&lt;p&gt;That old post, by Keith Packard: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;keithp.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;Repository_Formats_Matter&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;keithp.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;Repository_Formats_Matter&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve read through the documentation on the Fossil file format: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fossil-scm.org&amp;#x2F;index.html&amp;#x2F;doc&amp;#x2F;trunk&amp;#x2F;www&amp;#x2F;fileformat.wiki&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fossil-scm.org&amp;#x2F;index.html&amp;#x2F;doc&amp;#x2F;trunk&amp;#x2F;www&amp;#x2F;fileform...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I&amp;#x27;m just being dense, but e.g. in the case of the wiki which Fossil advertises as a core feature over Git, it&amp;#x27;s not clear to me how it wouldn&amp;#x27;t be implementable in a similar way in Git by some convention of creating commit objects &amp;amp; having some web UI that understands that convention, and if so the real differentiation is just in the porcelain part of the UI.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Osiris</author><text>The examples he presents to compare the features of GitHub to Fossil, not git itself.&lt;p&gt;Fossil has a GUI built-in that makes visualizing the repo easy.  There are tools for Git that provide similar functionality.&lt;p&gt;1. &amp;quot;Git makes it difficult to find successors (descendents) of a check-in&amp;quot; - Use a Git GUI like SourceTree and it&amp;#x27;s really damn easy to jump to a commit and review the entire graph up and down using links to jump to parent&amp;#x2F;child commits (even multiple parents for merges.&lt;p&gt;2. &amp;quot;The mental model for Git is needlessly complex&amp;quot; - Again, a Git GUI can make it really easy to keep track of &amp;quot;changed but not ready to commit, changed and ready to commit, local and remote branch&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;3. &amp;quot;Git does not track historical branch names&amp;quot; - The example he provides here shows a visual graph in Fossil of the branch history.  The exact same thing is available in Git via &amp;quot;git log --graph --all --decorate&amp;quot; or a GUI that shows the graph.&lt;p&gt;4. &amp;quot;Git requires more administrative support&amp;quot; - &amp;quot;apt install git&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;brew install git&amp;quot; or most systems come with it pre-installed.  Windows is a bit more annoying.&lt;p&gt;5. &amp;quot;Git provides a poor user experience&amp;quot; - &amp;quot;Just memorize the shell commands&amp;quot;.  Again, there is tooling available for Git to remove this requirement.&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that his main complaint is that Git doesn&amp;#x27;t provide a GUI out of the box to make visualizing the repository easier.  I get that, but there are enough tooling options available that it becomes a non-issue.  SourceTree is a native app for Mac and Windows and there are various other GUIs even CLI GUIs for Git that users have a lot of flexibility.  Fossil would seem to require them to use the GUI provided by Fossil whether they like it or not.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not bashing on Fossil at all. I&amp;#x27;m just saying that his arguments here show a lack of knowledge about the available tooling for Git and not fundamental advantages of Fossil over Git.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Fossil distributed version control system</title><url>https://fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>oomkiller</author><text>This may be helpful to you: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sqlite.org&amp;#x2F;whynotgit.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sqlite.org&amp;#x2F;whynotgit.html&lt;/a&gt;, especially the links to other comparisons at the very bottom.</text></item><item><author>avar</author><text>I wish there was some post in the same vein as &amp;quot;Repository Formats Matter&amp;quot; comparing Git and Fossil. I.e. not one that describes differences in incidental UI features and how they happen to be exposed to the user &lt;i&gt;now&lt;/i&gt;, but what the intrinsic differences are that make certain things intrinsically hard or impossible in one of the two systems.&lt;p&gt;That old post, by Keith Packard: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;keithp.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;Repository_Formats_Matter&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;keithp.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;Repository_Formats_Matter&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve read through the documentation on the Fossil file format: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fossil-scm.org&amp;#x2F;index.html&amp;#x2F;doc&amp;#x2F;trunk&amp;#x2F;www&amp;#x2F;fileformat.wiki&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fossil-scm.org&amp;#x2F;index.html&amp;#x2F;doc&amp;#x2F;trunk&amp;#x2F;www&amp;#x2F;fileform...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I&amp;#x27;m just being dense, but e.g. in the case of the wiki which Fossil advertises as a core feature over Git, it&amp;#x27;s not clear to me how it wouldn&amp;#x27;t be implementable in a similar way in Git by some convention of creating commit objects &amp;amp; having some web UI that understands that convention, and if so the real differentiation is just in the porcelain part of the UI.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kelnos</author><text>For full disclosure: the creator of SQLite is also the creator of Fossil, so this is not at all an unbiased comparison.</text></comment>