Title: [Cheatsheet] Fossil version control software

	Title: [Cheatsheet] Fossil version control software
	Author: Solène
	Date: 29 January 2023
	Tags: fossil versioning nocloud
	Description: In this article, you will learn about the version control
	software Fossil

	# Introduction

	Fossil is a DVCS (decentralized version control software), an
	alternative to programs such as darcs, mercurial or git. It's
	developed by the same people doing sqlite and rely on sqlite
	internally.

	Fossil official website

	# Why?

	Why not? I like diversity in software, and I'm unhappy to see Git
	dominating the field. Fossil is a viable alternative, with simplified
	workflow that work very well for my use case.

	One feature I really like is the autosync, when a remote is configured,
	fossil will automatically push the changes to the remote, then it looks
	like a centralizer version control software like SVN, but for my usage
	it's really practical. Of course, you can disable autosync if you
	don't want to use this feature. I suppose this could be reproduced in
	git using a post-commit hook that run `git push`.

	Fossil is opinionated, so you may not like it if that doesn't match
	your workflow, but when it does, it's a very practical software that
	won't get in your way.

	# Fossil repository is a file

	A major and disappointing fact at first is that a fossil repository is
	a single file. In order to checkout the content of the repository, you
	will need to run `fossil open /path/to/repo.fossil` in the directory
	you want to extract the files.

	Fossil supports multiple checkout of different branches in different
	directories, like git worktrees.

	# Cheatsheet

	Because I'm used to other versionning software, I need a simple
	cheatsheet to learn most operations, they are easy to learn, but I
	prefer to note it down somewhere.

	## View extra files

	You can easily find non-versioned files using the following command:

	`fossil extras`

	## View changes

	You can get a list of tracked files that changed:

	`fossil changes`

	Note that it only display a list of files, not the diff that you can
	obtain using `fossil diff`.

	## Commit

	By default, fossil will commit all changes in tracked files, if you
	want to only commit a change in a file, you must pass it as a
	parameter.

	`fossil commit`

	## Change author name

	`fossil user new solene@t470` and `fossil user default solene@t470`

	More possibilities are explained in Fossil documentation

	## Add a remote

	Copy the .fossil file to a remote server (I'm using ssh), and in your
	fossil checkout, type `fossil remote add my-remote
	ssh://hostname//home/solene/my-file.fossil`, and then `fossil remote
	my-remote`.

	Note that the remote server must have the fossil binary available in
	`$PATH`.

	## Display the Web Interface

	`fossil ui` will open your web browser and log in as admin user, you
	can view the timeline, bug trackers, wiki, forum etc... Of course, you
	can enable/disable everything you want.

	## Get changes from a remote

	This is a two-step operation, you must first get changes from the
	remote fossil, and then update your local checkout:

	```
	fossil pull
	fossil update
	```

	## Commit partial changes in a file

	Fossil doesn't allow staging and committing partial changes in a file
	like with `git add -p`, the official way is to stash your changes,
	generate a diff of the stash, edit the diff, apply it and commit. It's
	recommended to use a program named patchouli to select hunks in the
	diff file to ease the process.

	Fossil documentation: Git to Fossil translation

	The process looks like this:

	```shell
	fossil stash -m "tidying for making atomic commits"
	fossil stash diff > diff
	$EDITOR diff
	patch -p0 < diff
	fossil commit
	```

	Note that if you added new files, the "add" information is stashed and
	contained in the diff.