[darkpuma]

Hg and git have near feature parity, so I don't really lament Hg's loss so much. Sure Hg's CLI is a little bit better, but beyond that it never really offered any really compelling features over git. Mercurial and git is like Honda and Toyota; maybe one is a bit nicer than the other, but they're both offering you more or less the same thing.

Fossil is another matter. Fossil defies pithy car analogies. Integrating the bug tracker into the version control alone is a game changer, and that's not even all that Fossil does.

[jchw]

Hg actually does go beyond Git in many areas; I did outline a few but my favorites are the improved commit model (stages, natural branching, rewrite tracking,) the commands Git doesn’t have (absorb, evolve,) and the extensibility (see Facebook extensions.)

Sure, the model is similar and Fossil is different. But that is kind of an important note. If Fossil can’t be compared on the same level, maybe that’s a sign it solves fundamentally different problems.

In most setups, the bug tracker and source control are separate, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get bugtracking alongside code either, GitLab provides everything from bugtracking to CI to deploying stuff to Kubernetes.

Not to say Fossil isn’t cool or doesn’t have its place, but if I disagree with the philosophy (and I do, fundamentally,) then I don’t feel like I lose much using alternative software suites.

[darkpuma]

> If Fossil can’t be compared on the same level, maybe that’s a sign it solves fundamentally different problems.

Or Fossil provides a superset of the others. Like comparing a corkscrew, which only opens bottles of wine, to a swiss army knife that has a corkscrew. They both solve the same problem, but one of them also solves other problems and is generally a more useful tool to keep around in your pocket.

The world didn't lose much with Hg losing to git. But with Fossil losing, we lost a great deal. As a consequence we have a world where people feel locked into the proprietary bug trackers their git host provides. Had Hg prevailed, that situation would be no different. The only way the world would be different if Hg had prevailed would be fewer posts on HN whining about git's interface being obtuse. Not really a substantially different reality, is it?

[avar]

If you care about distributed bug tracking you might be interested in, or want to contribute to git-bug: https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-bug

It's aiming to create a fossil-like distributed bugtracker on top of git, with bidirectional importing from e.g. github's and gitlab's APIs.

[jchw]

I don’t think people feel locked into proprietary bug tracking, they just choose it out of convenience. You can export data from Github or Gitlab.

I mean hell, trac and redmine have been around forever now. Is an open source wiki+bugtracker that revolutionary?

My best guess is that there’s some benefit of merging the source control in, but I’m not sure; it’s not like other environments can’t provide integrated bug tracking.

[darkpuma]

> "You can export data from Github or Gitlab."

And then do what with it, import it into your own bugzilla instance? Have you ever tried that? It's a nightmare.

[jchw]

To be fair, Bugzilla is a nightmare by default.

At my previous org I imported our entire Github org into Gitlab EE. Don’t remember much pain, seemed pretty easy to me.

[rswail]

From my perspective, your last sentence is the wrong way around. It's not merging the source control into bug tracking, it's merging bug tracking into distributed source control.

[jacobush]

I used Fossil but it became very very slow when the repo size crawled near a gigabyte.

[rswail]

The issue that Fossil addresses from my perspective is the integration of bug/issue tracking and the VCS. The trouble with using Git{hub,lab} or other issue tracking is that the issue control isn't distributed in the same way as the source control is.

I want to be able to do a code review, deal with an issue, make changes to source, test etc offline/on a branch and then push all of the changes/impacts (source, issue, comments etc) for distribution to other developers.

[ethbro]

> Mercurial and git is like Honda and Toyota; maybe one is a bit nicer than the other, but they're both offering you more or less the same thing.

As a car guy, Honda makes cars. Toyota makes appliances for people who hate driving.

[recursive]

I hate (or at least am annoyed by) dealing with source control, although I acknowledge the need for it.

So does the analogy still fit? And which one is better for people that are merely putting up with the necessity for source control rather than enthusiasts?

[darkpuma]

My personal preference is for Honda as well, but when you sit down in the drivers seat and survey what is in front of you in a Honda or a Toyota, you'll find they have more or less the same things. Perhaps Hondas being set up to be more agreeable to "car guys" is similar to the CLI of Hg not being so obtuse, but both are still nevertheless capable of more or less the same feats. They'll both see you through your commute and either is a bad choice for off-roading.

[Annatar]

As another car guy, I agree. Never quite thought of it that way but it's true.

[dajohnson89]

Driving a Toyota feels like a game/toy. Which puts me on edge, because I feel detached from what the car is actually doing. The handling feels.... too smooth.