Improving Wetware

Because technology is never the issue

Moving to Fossil

Posted by Pete McBreen 15 May 2010 at 10:23

After a few years of using Git as my version control system, it is now time to move on to a distributed version control system that is more suited to projects with a smaller number of contributors Fossil.

Main advantage I see that fossil has over git is the ease of setup for remote servers. A 2 line cgi script is sufficient for fossil to operate as a server over http. Git has something similar, but after several years of using git setting it up on a server is still not an easy task, which is why many people choose to use a service like Github or Gitorious. But the existence of these services points to a problem, why choose to use a distributed version control system and then adopt a centralized hosting service to use it. Surely the point of using a distributed system is to make it distributed — but we have created a system where the key repositories are all stored in a central place with a single point of failure.

Yes, I know that with a distributed version control system the clones have all the information that the original has, but the concept of centralizing the infrastructure seems strange to me. I much prefer the ease with which I can create a new fossil repository and then get it served out from an available web server relatively easily. Admittedly fossil does not integrate with any other identity management system, so the creator of the fossil repository has to manage the users (other than the anonymous user), but for small teams this is not an issue.

The other key feature for me is the autosynchronize on commit, so whenever a local commit is made, the changes are pushed to the original repository. Automatic, offsite backup without having to remember to do anything beyond the normal checkin of completed work.