from Hacker News

Why SQLite Does Not Use Git

by sarupbanskota on 11/16/23, 6:18 AM with 43 comments

  • by LVB on 11/16/23, 7:44 AM

    I’ve tried Fossil a number of times, but several oddly-rigid aspects always manage to turn me off. Take, for example, the integrated bug tracker, which is novel and a big draw for me. Say I write up a bug and then notice an error in the description… I can’t edit it! I can merely append more comments, which also can't be edited or removed. The recommendation I found was that I should close (there's no delete!) the bug and create a new one. What’s the point of that level of immutability? I can tolerate the purity for the source code (e.g., the whole no rebase position they've taken), but for project metadata, I need way more freedom.

    It’s a cool app that I’d love to use, but there are a few showstopper oddities.

  • by LAC-Tech on 11/16/23, 7:31 AM

    It's been 10 years and I still need to look up the most basic things in git. It's just not intuitive to me at all.

    Had fossil recommended to me. Also read their fossil vs git page, and I found myself agreeing with everything they said.

    https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/fossil-v-git.wiki

  • by renewiltord on 11/16/23, 7:24 AM

    It's always fascinating when someone building something yak shaves a project of major skill on the way. Both git and fossil would be notable on their own, but the respective authors simply needed a tool for Linux and Sqlite.

    Really raises the boundary for what a software engineer can do. Very inspiring.

    TeX was also built for TAOCP. Crazy stuff. Really makes me want to write code. Love it.

  • by dang on 11/16/23, 7:53 AM

    Related:

    Why SQLite does not use Git (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36830813 - July 2023 (439 comments)

    Why SQLite does not use Git (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29125934 - Nov 2021 (356 comments)

    Why SQLite Does Not Use Git? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26112802 - Feb 2021 (1 comment)

    Why SQLite Does Not Use Git - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16806114 - April 2018 (608 comments)

  • by vbezhenar on 11/16/23, 7:47 AM

    People like to hate Git, but I guess that's because everyone uses it. I'm using Git, mostly with Idea UI, but sometimes with CLI and it's absolutely fine for me. I understand how Git works (the whole concept of commits, parents and so on), I follow some sane rules to prevent commit graph from turning to spaghetti and I never have any issues, it just works for me, 100% reliably.

  • by xlii on 11/16/23, 7:51 AM

    I tried to use Fossil for personal projects but it didn’t work for me.

    Idea is very appealing but in the end I found way too many distractions, especially in solo dev environment. I also agree that in group Git is standard so introducing something like Fossil might add needles friction.

    But I still recommend checking it out. Some concepts are neat and might align with use cases that I don’t have.

    Right now I’m experimenting with jj/jujutsu [1] and so far it works locally but I still hadn’t used the Git integration.

    [1]: https://github.com/martinvonz/jj

  • by rwbt on 11/16/23, 7:24 AM

    I use Fossil every day for all my projects and it works great for me. Super easy to self host and has integrated Wiki, bug tracker, ticket system and a server. Very intuitive CLI too.

    Highly recommended for indie/small teams.

  • by random_kris on 11/16/23, 7:23 AM

    As a web dev, user of 100 different tools to render something to browser, I like how self contained it seems to be.

  • by aaviator42 on 11/16/23, 7:32 AM

  • by account-5 on 11/16/23, 7:42 AM

    I use fossil on my computer for personal projects, scripts, and even my notes. Much prefer it to git.

  • by kramerger on 11/16/23, 7:56 AM

    > 2. A Few Reasons Why SQLite Does Not Use Git

    It's fine if you don't want to use git, really.

    But some of these objections don't make sense. Did you try "tig" and bare repos on a local machine/server?

  • by j-a-a-p on 11/16/23, 7:59 AM

    How should other people look at us? We always have to change these core things. From proprietary source control to CVS - that was actually a good idea because it was the open source standard. Then we all changed again to SVN for reasons I can't remember and then to GIT. And indeed it is about time to change again.

    For the others who have to earn the money to support these follies, it is all the same. We could as well have sticked to CVS.

  • by RagnarD on 11/16/23, 9:10 AM

    I'd like to see Visual Studio able to use Fossil for its source control management rather than only really supporting Git. I suppose Microsoft owning Github is a major factor there, but it would be nice if there was at least an extension to do it. There's apparently one for VS Code.

  • by mbork_pl on 11/16/23, 7:33 AM

    I would love to use Fossil, but I'm afraid it doesn't have its Magit...

  • by Regnore on 11/16/23, 7:34 AM

    It's a shame they don't use a SQLite database for version control. I know it's probably the least efficient way to store code changes but it would bring a whole new level to bootstrapping processes. Each code change would be inserted into the db by the code produced by the prior change.

    It would be exciting as it is stable.