Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 3, 2026

Fossil (software)

Fossil is a software configuration management, bug tracking system and wiki software server for use in software development created by D. Richard Hipp.

Last revised
Jun 3, 2026
Read time
≈ 2 min
Length
427 w
Citations
18
Source
Wikipedia ↗
Fossil
Original authorD. Richard Hipp
Initial release2006 (2006)
Stable release
2.281 Edit this on Wikidata / 11 March 2026 (11 March 2026)
Written inC, SQL
Operating systemCross-platform
TypeSoftware configuration management, bug tracking system, wiki software
License2010: BSD-2-Clausea2
2007: GPL-2.0-onlyb
Websitewww.fossil-scm.org Edit this on Wikidata
Repository

Fossil is a software configuration management, bug tracking system and wiki software server for use in software development created by D. Richard Hipp.

Features

The Fossil web interface showing changes to the SQLite source tree source ↗

Fossil is a cross-platform distributed version control system that runs on Linux, BSD derivatives, Mac and Windows. It is capable of performing distributed version control, bug tracking, wiki services, and documentation.34

The software has a built-in web interface, accessible from the executable via a standalone HTTP server or as a CGI application. This interface provides features akin to a software forge, including bug tracking, documentation viewing, and commit timelines.5

To simplify centralized development, Fossil provides an "autosync" mode to automatically sync changes when commits are made, in a similar manner to centralized version control systems.46

Content is stored in an SQLite database, allowing it to benefit from the latter's atomic transactions for corruption resistance.78

Fossil is free software released under a BSD license (relicensed from previously GPL).9

Adoption

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 2009-08-12.1011

Fossil is additionally used for a few projects associated with Fossil and SQLite, including Tcl/Tk12, Pikchr13, and LuaSQLite314, as well as MySQL++, a C++ wrapper for the MySQL and MariaDB C APIs15.

See also

See also

Notes

Notes

  1. BSD-2-Clause since 2010-05-16.
  2. GPL-2.0-only from 2007-07-21 until 2010-05-16.
References

References

  1. "Changes for version 2.28".
  2. Fossil Copyright
  3. "Fossil: A Coherent Software Configuration Management System". www.fossil-scm.org. Retrieved 2025-04-21.
  4. Edge, Jake (March 16, 2011). "Version control with Fossil". lwn.net. Archived from the original on 2024-01-16. Retrieved 2025-04-22.
  5. "Fossil: The Fossil Web Interface". www.fossil-scm.org. Retrieved 2025-04-21.
  6. "Fossil: Fossil Concepts: Workflow". www.fossil-scm.org. Retrieved 2025-04-22.
  7. "Integrated version control with Fossil SCM". 5 November 2009., DLR Tech Talk presentation by Arne Bachmann, 2009-12-01
  8. "Fossil File Formats Login". fossil-scm.org. Hwaci. Retrieved 23 April 2026.
  9. "Fossil DSCM Relicensed with BSD License". 2010-05-16.
  10. "Fossil: Fossil Performance". Fossil-scm.org. 2009-08-23. Retrieved 2009-09-12.
  11. "SQLite: Timeline". sqlite.org.
  12. "Tcl Source Code". core.tcl-lang.org. Tcl. Retrieved 23 April 2026.
  13. "Pikchr: Documentation". pikchr.org. Hwaci. Retrieved 23 April 2026.
  14. "LuaSQLite3". lua.sqlite.org. Hwaci. Retrieved 23 April 2026.
  15. "MySQL++". tangentsoft.com. tangentsoft. Retrieved 23 April 2026.
Further reading

Further reading

External links