How can I use fossil (DVCS) in a home environment?

Question

I'm trying fossil as my new VCS, since I'm a lone developer working on small projects. I started testing fossil but I encountered a (probably major newbie) problem. How does one push or pull to another directory (which is easy on Hg). Fossil pull or push commands expect a URL and not a directory. When I start a server in one directory and try to push from another directory I get the "server loop" error message. Any ideas?

Answer 1

When I tried this, clone and pull worked just as expected WITHOUT running a fossil server.

Create a master repository

>mkdir master

>cd master

>fossil new master_repos.fsl
project-id: dbcb1863865d7d3ed74f873df6daf07c5853df5e
server-id:  ea7a2e2496cc9c958cb7cc50bf48c0810b25a0a0
admin-user: james (initial password is "89ef88")

>fossil open master_repos.fsl


>echo "hello world" > a.a

>fossil add a.a
ADDED  a.a

>fossil ci -m "add a.a"
New_Version: 80b67a84ff276e559328f373008ff3014a869170

Clone the master repository

>cd ..

>mkdir trial

>cd trial

>fossil clone ../master/master_repos.fsl trail_repos.fsl
Repository cloned into trail_repos.fsl
Rebuilding repository meta-data...
3 (100%)...
project-id: dbcb1863865d7d3ed74f873df6daf07c5853df5e
server-id:  24da0b614d1a1d6cd8ac5a86200390b47b87ee27
admin-user: james (password is "89ef88")

>fossil open trail_repos.fsl
a.a
project-name: <unnamed>
repository:   C:/Documents and Settings/james/My Documents/code/test/trial/trail
_repos.fsl
local-root:   C:/Documents and Settings/james/My Documents/code/test/trial/
project-code: dbcb1863865d7d3ed74f873df6daf07c5853df5e
server-code:  24da0b614d1a1d6cd8ac5a86200390b47b87ee27
checkout:     80b67a84ff276e559328f373008ff3014a869170 2009-11-12 15:19:51 UTC
parent:       b04cc7533753a8a8a1f8a92b1be8b73cbc368660 2009-11-12 15:18:11 UTC
tags:         trunk


>type a.a
"hello world"

Modify the master

>cd ../master

>echo "hello #2" > b.b

>fossil add b.b
ADDED  b.b

>fossil ci -m "add b.b"
New_Version: 863e2501037e9f215ff3ec08a1d7802315151e7b

Pull from the modified master

>cd ../trial

>fossil pull ../master/master_repos.fsl
                Bytes      Cards  Artifacts     Deltas
Send:             130          1          0          0
Received:         230          6          0          0
Send:             224          2          0          0
Received:         590          8          2          0
Total network traffic: 649 bytes sent, 806 bytes received

>fossil update
Autosync:  file://C:/Documents and Settings/james/My Documents/code/test/master/
master_repos.fsl
                Bytes      Cards  Artifacts     Deltas
Send:             130          1          0          0
Received:         230          6          0          0
Total network traffic: 295 bytes sent, 337 bytes received
ADD b.b


>type b.b
"hello #2"

Answer 2

According to this fossil ticket, cloning, pushing and pulling require a fossil server to be running. You can't just use the repo, you'll have to start a server, then refer to http://localhost/whatever and you should be golden.

1. Run fossil server in the original repository
2. Go to the destination directory and run fossil clone http://localhost:8080 <repository name> (or push or pull)