1.0 Don't Stress!

If you start out using one DVCS and later decide you like the other better, you can easily move your content¹.

Fossil and Git are very similar in many respects, but they also have important differences. See the table below for a high-level summary and the text that follows for more details.

Keep in mind that you are reading this on a Fossil website, and though we try to be fair, the information here might be biased in favor of Fossil. Ask around for second opinions from people who have used both Fossil and Git.

¹Git does not support wiki, tickets, or tech-notes, so those elements will not transfer when exporting from Fossil to Git.

2.0 Differences Between Fossil And Git

Differences between Fossil and Git are summarized by the following table, with further description in the text that follows.

GIT	FOSSIL
File versioning only	Versioning, Tickets, Wiki, and Technotes
Ad-hoc, pile-of-files key/value database	Relational SQL database
Bazaar-style development	Cathedral-style development
Designed for Linux development	Designed for SQLite development
Lots of little tools	Stand-alone executable
One check-out per repository	Many check-outs per repository
Remembers what you should have done	Remembers what you actually did
GPL	BSD

2.1 Feature Set

Git provides file versioning services only, whereas Fossil adds integrated wiki, ticketing & bug tracking, embedded documentation, and Technical notes. These additional capabilities are available for Git as 3rd-party and/or user-installed add-ons, but with Fossil they are integrated into the design. One way to describe Fossil is that it is "github-in-a-box".

If you clone Git's self-hosting repository you get just Git's source code. If you clone Fossil's self-hosting repository, you get the entire Fossil website - source code, documentation, ticket history, and so forth.

For developers who choose to self-host projects (rather than using a 3rd-party service such as GitHub) Fossil is much easier to set up, since the stand-alone Fossil executable together with a 2-line CGI script suffice to instantiate a full-featured developer website. To accomplish the same using Git requires locating, installing, configuring, integrating, and managing a wide assortment of separate tools. Standing up a developer website using Fossil can be done in minutes, whereas doing the same using Git requires hours or days.

2.2 Database

The baseline data structures for Fossil and Git are the same (modulo formatting details). Both systems store check-ins as immutable objects referencing their immediate ancestors and named by a cryptographic hash of the check-in content.

The difference is that Git stores its objects as individual files in the ".git" folder or compressed into bespoke "pack-files", whereas Fossil stores its objects in a relational (SQLite) database file. To put it another way, Git uses an ad-hoc pile-of-files key/value database whereas Fossil uses a proven, general-purpose SQL database. This difference is more than an implementation detail. It has important consequences.

With Git, one can easily locate the ancestors of a particular check-in by following the pointers embedded in the check-in object, but it is difficult to go the other direction and locate the descendants of a check-in. It is so difficult, in fact, that neither native Git nor GitHub provide this capability. With Git, if you are looking at some historical check-in then you cannot ask "what came next" or "what are the children of this check-in".

Fossil, on the other hand, parses essential information about check-ins (parents, children, committers, comments, files changed, etc.) into a relational database that can be easily queried using concise SQL statements to find both ancestors and descendents of a check-in.

Leaf check-ins in Git that lack a "ref" become "detached", making them difficult to locate and subject to garbage collection. This "detached head" problem has caused untold grief for countless Git users. With Fossil, all check-ins are easily located using a variety of attributes (parents, children, committer, date, full-text search of the check-in comment) and so detached heads are simply not possible.

The ease with which check-ins can be located and queried in Fossil has resulted in a huge variety of reports and status screens (examples) that show project state in ways that help developers maintain enhanced awareness and comprehension and avoid errors.

2.3 Cathedral vs. Bazaar

Fossil and Git promote different development styles. Git promotes a "bazaar" development style in which numerous anonymous developers make small and sometimes haphazard contributions. Fossil promotes a "cathedral" development model in which the project is closely supervised by an highly engaged architect and implemented by a clique of developers.

Nota Bene: This is not to say that Git cannot be used for cathedral-style development or that Fossil cannot be used for bazaar-style development. They can be. But those modes are not their design intent nor their low-friction path.

Git encourages a style in which individual developers work in relative isolation, maintaining their own branches and occasionally rebasing and pushing selected changes up to the main repository. Developers using Git often have their own private branches that nobody else ever sees. Work becomes siloed. This is exactly what one wants when doing bazaar-style development.

Fossil, in contrast, strives to keep all changes from all contributors mirrored in the main repository (in separate branches) at all times. Work in progress from one developer is readily visible to all other developers and to the project leader, well before the code is ready to integrate. Fossil places a lot of emphasis on reporting the state of the project, and the changes underway by all developers, so that all developers and especially the project leader can maintain a better mental picture of what is happening, and better situational awareness.

2.4 Linux vs. SQLite

Git was specifically designed to support the development of Linux. Fossil was specifically designed to support the development of SQLite.

Both SQLite and Linux are important pieces of software. SQLite is found on far more systems than Linux. (Almost every Linux system uses SQLite, but there are many non-Linux systems such as iPhones, PlayStations, and Windows PCs that use SQLite.) On the other hand, for those systems that do use Linux, Linux is a far more important component.

Linux uses a bazaar-style development model. There are thousands and thousands of contributors, most of whom do not know each others names. Git is designed for this scenario.

SQLite uses cathedral-style development. 95% of the code in SQLite comes from just three programmers, 64% from just the lead developer. And all SQLite developers know each other well and interact daily. Fossil is designed for this development model.

2.5 Lots of little tools vs. Self-contained system

Git consists of many small tools, each doing one small part of the job, which can be recombined (by experts) to perform powerful operations. Git has a lot of complexity and many dependencies and requires an "installer" script or program to get it running.

Fossil is a single self-contained stand-alone executable with hardly any dependencies. Fossil can be (and often is) run inside a minimally configured chroot jail. To install Fossil, one merely puts the executable on $PATH.

The designer of Git says that the unix philosophy is to have lots of small tools that collaborate to get the job done. The designer of Fossil says that the unix philosophy is "it just works". Both individuals have written their DVCSes to reflect their own view of the "unix philosophy".

2.6 One vs. Many Check-outs per Repository

A "repository" in Git is a pile-of-files in the ".git" subdirectory of a single check-out. The check-out and the repository are inseperable.

With Fossil, a "repository" is a single SQLite database file that can be stored anywhere. There can be multiple active check-outs from the same repository, perhaps open on different branches or on different snapshots of the same branch. Long-running tests or builds can be running in one check-out while changes are being committed in another.

2.7 What you should have done vs. What you actually did

Git puts a lot of emphasis on maintaining a "clean" check-in history. Extraneous and experimental branches by individual developers often never make it into the main repository. And branches are often rebased before being pushed, to make it appear as if development had been linear. Git strives to record what the development of a project should have looked like had there been no mistakes.

Fossil, in contrast, puts more emphasis on recording exactly what happened, including all of the messy errors, dead-ends, experimental branches, and so forth. One might argue that this makes the history of a Fossil project "messy". But another point of view is that this makes the history "accurate". In actual practice, the superior reporting tools available in Fossil mean that the added "mess" is not a factor.

One commentator has mused that Git records history according to the victors, whereas Fossil records history as it actually happened.

2.8 GPL vs. BSD

Git is covered by the GPL license whereas Fossil is covered by a two-clause BSD license.

Consider the difference between GPL and BSD licenses: GPL is designed to make writing easier at the expense of making reading harder. BSD is designed to make reading easier at the expense of making writing harder.

To a first approximation, the GPL license grants the right to read source code to anyone who promises to give back enhancements. In other words, the act of reading GPL source code (a prerequiste for making changes) implies acceptance of the license which requires updates to be contributed back under the same license. (The details are more complex, but the foregoing captures the essence of the idea.) A big advantage of the GPL is that anybody can contribute to the code without having to sign additional legal documentation because they have implied their acceptance of the GPL license by the very act of reading the source code. This means that a GPL project can legally accept anonymous and drive-by patches.

The BSD licenses, on the other hand, make reading much easier than the GPL, because the reader need not surrender proprietary interest in their own enhancements. On the flip side, BSD and similarly licensed projects must obtain legal affidavits from authors before new content can be added into the project. Anonymous and drive-by patches cannot be accepted. This makes signing up new contributors for BSD licensed projects harder.

The licenses on the implementations of Git and Fossil only apply to the implementations themselves, not to the projects which the systems store. Nevertheless, one can see a more GPL-oriented world-view in Git and a more BSD-oriented world-view in Fossil. Git encourages anonymous contributions and siloed development, which are hallmarks of the GPL/bazaar approach to software, whereas Fossil encourages a more tightly collaborative, cliquish, cathedral-style approach more typical of BSD-licensed projects.

3.0 Missing Features

Most of the capabilities found in Git are also available in Fossil and the other way around. For example, both systems have local check-outs, remote repositories, push/pull/sync, bisect capabilities, and a "stash". Both systems store project history as a directed acyclic graph (DAG) of immutable check-in objects.

But there are a few capabilities in one system that are missing from the other.

3.1 Features found in Fossil but missing from Git

• The ability to show descendents of a check-in.

Both Git and Fossil can easily find the ancestors of a check-in. But only Fossil shows the descendents. (It is possible to find the descendents of a check-in in Git using the log, but that is sufficiently difficult that nobody ever actually does it.)

• Wiki, Embedded documentation, Trouble-tickets, and Tech-Notes

Git only provides versioning of source code. Fossil strives to provide other related configuration management services as well.

• Named branches

Branches in Fossil have persistent names that are propagated to collaborators via push and pull. All developers see the same name on the same branch. Git, in contrast, uses only local branch names, so developers working on the same project can (and frequently do) use a different name for the same branch.

• The fossil all command

Fossil keeps track of all repositories and check-outs and allows operations over all of them with a single command. For example, in Fossil is possible to request a pull of all repositories on a laptop from their respective servers, prior to taking the laptop off network. Or it is possible to do "fossil all status" to see if there are any uncommitted changes that were overlooked prior to the end of the workday.

• The fossil ui command

Fossil supports an integrated web interface. Some of the same features are available using third-party add-ons for Git, but they do not provide nearly as many features and they are not nearly as convenient to use.

3.2 Features found in Git but missing from Fossil

• Rebase

Because of its emphasis on recording history exactly as it happened, rather than as we would have liked it to happen, Fossil deliberately does not provide a "rebase" command. One can rebase manually in Fossil, with sufficient perserverence, but it is not something that can be done with a single command.

• Push or pull a single branch

The fossil push, fossil pull, and fossil sync commands do not provide the capability to push or pull individual branches. Pushing and pulling in Fossil is all or nothing. This is in keeping with Fossil's emphasis on maintaining a complete record and on sharing everything between all developers.