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.1
Fossil is free software released under a BSD license2 (relicensed from previously GPL).
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 2009-08-12.34
Some examples of other projects using Fossil are:
The following websites provide free source code hosting for Fossil repositories:
"Integrated version control with Fossil SCM". 5 November 2009., DLR Tech Talk presentation by Arne Bachmann, 2009-12-01 https://www.slideshare.net/Ashberk/integrated-version-control-with-fossil-scm ↩
"Fossil DSCM Relicensed with BSD License". 2010-05-16. http://fossil-scm.org/index.html/artifact/c7dd1de9f9539a5a859c2b41fe4560604a774476 ↩
"Fossil: Fossil Performance". Fossil-scm.org. 2009-08-23. Retrieved 2009-09-12. http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/stats.wiki ↩
"SQLite: Timeline". sqlite.org. https://www.sqlite.org/src/timeline?c=2009-08-12+11:45:41 ↩
"Chiselapp.com shutting down". James Turner. 2013-03-28. Retrieved 2013-04-10. http://www.mail-archive.com/fossil-users@lists.fossil-scm.org/msg11540.html ↩
"ChiselApp ChangeOver Complete". Andreas Kupries. 2013-04-30. Retrieved 2013-05-01. http://www.mail-archive.com/fossil-users@lists.fossil-scm.org/msg11672.html ↩
"Example: Free Fossil-SCM Repository Hosting". Retrieved 2015-11-21. http://fossilrepos.sourceforge.net ↩