D 2020-03-10T18:43:51.722
L Why\sFossil?
P 9badc4c82838b942dd85129c823b8f8fc4059693428c8a07183d3a41e1ca5669
U joel
W 1666
<h1>Why Fossil?</h1>

[https://www.fossil-scm.org|Fossil] provides version control, and like most hep developers I use version control because of its several&nbsp;[https://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/whyusefossil.wiki|benefits].

However, you are likely reading this because of the implied second half of the question: why Fossil <em>and not&nbsp;Git</em>?

<ul>
<li>I want the source code to be part of the website. Fossil lets me do that easily, and lets me control the web interface, without running a database server or any third-party applications. Git doesn’t.</li>
<li>The Fossil program is a single file and a Fossil repo is a single SQLite file. Deploying Fossil and moving repos around is dead-simple.</li>
<li>For this project, I wanted granular control over how outside developers interact with the code: something between totally public or totally private. Fossil gives me very fine-grained [http://fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/caps/ref.html|permissions] to apply to [http://fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/caps/|different individual users, types of accounts, or anonymous users].</li>
<li>Fossil repos include bug tracking, embedded documentation, and wikis which are tightly integrated with the version-control functionality. This means all of my development notes and issue tracking are actually part my project, rather than objects hosted on a third-party service.</li>
</ul>

Being familiar with Git, you may find the following analogy statement&nbsp;instructive:

<b>GitHub hosted repo : Self-hosted Fossil repo :: Expo floor booth : The&nbsp;Batcave</b>

It’s a rough analogy, but it works.
Z b36e4b8b62b38c9daee6059161a71a4e