Fossil version control

[Paul Breen]

I submitted a request for version control integration for FireFly some time back, and I think it died because everyone thinks version control is bit of overkill for a one man think tank using powerbasic and firefly. I think you should reconsider, because fossil is programmed by Richard Hipp, developer of Sqlite and the scope of usability is perfect for a one man desktop developer. The philosophy is smiliar to Powrbasic, the installation is a single exe file, put it somewhere (I put it in system32). Simple commands like "fossil add filename" and "fossil commit" are at the heart of operation. If you type "fossil ui", you get a web page generated by fossil that puts a GUI on some of the features like bug tracking (tickets) and a wiki that is a great way to document your project. You can check out your "depository" with SQLiteExpert because your project is preserved in a sqlite database, very cool. If you have checked out CVS and Subversion (and Tortoise) and they made your head spin, you should still give this approach a look.
Get it here http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/index.wiki
and I found a great site where you can download a real down to earth manual for people who have NEVER used source code control here: http://pandora.dyn-o-saur.com:8080/cgi-bin/Book.cgi/index

I think this is worth your time.
PB

[Rolf Brandt]

The link to http://pandora... seems to be broken.

Edited:
Guess it was only temporary. The link works now.

[John Messingham]

I think it died because everyone thinks version control is bit of overkill for a one man think tank using powerbasic and firefly

I will add some weight to this not being the case. I work alone on projects that can range from a few files to many thousands of files (I deal with Joomla! and other open source projects) and have avoided many sleepless nights because if I need to look back at something I just look back through the version control system.

[Paul Squires]

The last time this topic came up I downloaded Fossil and looked at it for an hour or so. It kind of got lost in the shuffle because at the time I was dealing with more important FF3 issues. Now that Ff3 is stabilized, maybe it is time to revisit the Fossil idea again.

[Paul Squires]

Update: I spent a few hours today looking at Fossil again. It is not as hard as I thought it would be. I have created some test routines. Currently, I am able to Create, Open, Add, Commit and Close repositories. Very easy actually with a few lines of code. Files are added recursively so all I need to do is specify the root project folder (I only need to -exclude the actual fossil database file so it doesn't get included in the repository itself).

If all goes well hopefully we will see Fossil integrated directly into the FireFly IDE.

Fossil also handles creating and tracking bug tickets. That's a feature that would be cool from within FireFly itself. Currently, I use the Mantis Bug Tracker.

Fossil also has an all-in-one integrated interface that displays in a web browser (fossil ui <repository>). Eventually it would be cool to use this feature and be able to display it from within a web browser control embedded inside FireFly itself. That may be a challenge, but pretty cool nonetheless.

[Jim Dunn]

Might not be too hard to "embed a browser", check out the Power-Jose source-code forum:

http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pbforums/forumdisplay.php?f=53

(first entry, "embed web-browser")

: )

[Paul Squires]

Yes, embedding the web browser in FF is the easy part. Getting the Fossil server to output the pages to that embedded web browser rather than the system defined web browser (IExplorer, FireFox, Chrome) is the real challenge.

[José Roca]

Getting the Fossil server to output the pages to that embedded web browser rather than the system defined web browser (IExplorer, FireFox, Chrome) is the real challenge.

You can't.

If FOSSIL could generate silently the web pages, without calling any browser, and let you get the urls, then you could load them in the embedded WebBrowser control.