Why Fossil?

Fossil provides version control, and like most hep developers I use version control because of its several benefits.

However, you are likely reading this because of the implied second half of the question: why Fossil and not Git?

• 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.
• 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.
• 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 permissions to apply to different individual users, types of accounts, or anonymous users.
• 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.

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

GitHub hosted repo : Self-hosted Fossil repo :: Expo floor booth : The Batcave

It’s a rough analogy, but it works.