# Update Feb. 2021: Back from the Dead

After a 6-year forced hiatus due to chronic RSI, libfossil is again making some headway. In early Feb. 2021 its hashing support was brought up to date with regard to fossil's hardened SHA1 and SHA3-256 hashes. That was the major technical hurdle preventing further progress, so now they way is clear (or clearer) for bringing the library into the 2020's.

A chat room and forum have been established for this effort but they are currently limited to developers. Please [get in touch][home-sgb] if you are a participant and need info about either. This project is *currently* only opened to active participants of the [Fossil SCM][home-fossil] project (as committers and/or forum participants). That said, it does not require the same code release waiver which that project requires. If/when the project reaches a client-usable state, it will be opened up for wider participation.

As of December, 2021, the library is far enough along that the [the library's provided client applications][f-apps] can be used for the majority of CLI-based "daily driver" fossil operations, e.g. merging, diffing, and checking in/out. The most significant outlier is that fossil is still required for network synchronization. (Note, however, that this project does not aim to replace the fossil web UI.)


[home-sgb]: https://wanderinghorse.net/home/stephan/
[home-fossil]: https://fossil-scm.org
[f-apps]: /doc/ckout/f-apps/

## Status, [](TODOs), and Whatnot