Fossil is a software configuration management, bug tracking system and wiki software server for use in software development created by D. Richard Hipp.
Features
Fossil is a cross-platform DVCS that runs on Linux, BSD derivatives, Mac and Windows. It is capable of performing distributed version control, bug tracking, wiki services, and blogging. The software has a built-in web interface, which reduces project tracking complexity and promotes situational awareness. A user may simply type "fossil ui" from within any check-out and Fossil automatically opens the user's web browser to display a page giving detailed history and status information on that project. The fossil executable may be run as a standalone HTTP server, as a CGI application, accessed via SSH, or run interactively from the CLI.
Being distributed, Fossil requires no central server, although collaboration is made easier by using one.
Content is stored using a SQLite database so that transactions are atomic even if interrupted by a power loss or system crash.
Fossil is free software released under a BSD license (relicensed from previously GPL).
Adoption
Fossil is used for version control by the SQLite project, which is itself a component of Fossil. SQLite transitioned to using Fossil for version control over CVS on 2009-08-12.
Some examples of other projects using Fossil are:
- Tcl/Tk Project
- Pikchr
- MySQL , a C wrapper for the MySQL and MariaDB C APIs
- LuaSQLite3
- libfossil
- fnc, the ncurses-based Fossil UI experience in the terminal
- Androwish, the Tcl implementation for Android
- ObjFW, a cross-platform Objective-C runtime and framework
Source code hosting
The following websites provide free source code hosting for Fossil repositories:
- Chisel. Original site owner James Turner announced that the site would cease operation on May 1, 2013. After domain ownership was transferred on May 1, 2013, it continued operation.
- SourceForge (unofficially through webpages hosting service)
See also
- Comparison of revision control software
- List of revision control software
Notes
References
Further reading
- Schimpf, Jim (March 2013). Fossil Version Control - A Users Guide (PDF) (2.0 ed.). Retrieved 11 November 2013.
External links
- Official website



