Artifact [506f670974]

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title: Migration from Fossil

weight: 30

This guide is for users of upstream Fossil SCM (the C binary distributed by fossil-scm.org) who are evaluating libfossil — a pure-Go implementation of the Fossil repository format and sync protocol.

It is intentionally honest about gaps. If a capability is not listed under "Command coverage" below, assume it is not implemented yet.

For a structural overview of how libfossil is organised — the package layout, storage model, and pluggable axes — see Architecture.

Repo format compatibility

libfossil reads and writes the same on-disk .fossil SQLite repository format as upstream Fossil. A repository created by either tool can be opened by the other at the file level — there is no import/export step and no data migration is needed. Both implementations share the same blob table layout, manifest/control artifact encoding, and delta chain representation.

One caveat: features introduced in very recent upstream Fossil releases (bleeding-edge artifact card types, new Fossil-specific SQL functions used in triggers) may not yet be parsed by libfossil. Stable Fossil repositories from the last several years round-trip cleanly.

Binary name and invocation

The compiled binary is named libfossil (not fossil) to avoid $PATH collisions when both tools are installed on the same machine:

go install github.com/danmestas/go-libfossil/cmd/libfossil@latest

libfossil uses a subcommand-grouped syntax: the top-level group is repo, and individual operations live beneath it. Upstream Fossil uses a flat command style. Examples:

Upstream Fossil	libfossil
fossil clone URL repo.fossil	libfossil repo clone URL repo.fossil
fossil ci -m "msg" file.txt	libfossil -R repo.fossil repo ci -m "msg" file.txt
fossil timeline	libfossil -R repo.fossil repo timeline

The -R <path> flag selects the repository and is a global flag (before the repo subcommand group).

Command coverage

The following repo subcommands are implemented today. Every entry below corresponds to a registered Kong command in cli/repo.go in the libfossil source tree.

Repository creation

• repo new — create a new, empty repository file.
• repo clone — clone a remote Fossil server over HTTP(S).

Working tree and checkout

• repo open — materialize a checkout in a directory (creates .fslckout).
• repo co — check out a named version.
• repo ls — list files in a version.
• repo status — show pending changes in the working directory.
• repo add — stage files for addition.
• repo rm — stage files for removal.
• repo rename — rename a tracked file.
• repo revert — undo staging changes.
• repo ci — commit the checkout's changes, or only the named files, with any pending merge as a merge parent.

History and inspection

• repo timeline — repository history.
• repo log --path — the check-ins that changed a path (fossil finfo).
• repo snapshot — commit one file's bytes onto trunk without a checkout; see Embedding the CLI.
• repo diff — show changes vs. a version.
• repo annotate / repo blame — annotate file lines with commit history.
• repo cat — output artifact content.
• repo hash — hash files (SHA1 or SHA3-256).
• repo info — repository statistics.
• repo resolve — resolve a symbolic name to a UUID.
• repo schema — operate on the synced table schema.
• repo query — run ad-hoc SQL against the repository DB.

Branching and merging

• repo branch — list/create branches.
• repo tag — tag operations.
• repo merge — merge a divergent version into the current checkout.
• repo conflicts — list files holding merge conflict markers, and conflict-fork entries.
• repo mark-resolved — resolve a conflict-fork entry. A merge conflict needs no marking: as in fossil, editing the markers out resolves it.
• repo bisect — binary-search commits for bug introductions.
• repo undo / repo redo — undo/redo the last operation.
• repo stash — stash working changes.

Collaboration and admin

• repo user — user management.
• repo invite — generate an invite token for a user.
• repo config — get/set/list repository configuration.
• repo wiki — wiki page operations.
• repo uv — unversioned file operations.
• repo extract — extract files from a version.
• repo delta — create/apply delta operations.
• repo verify — verify repository integrity.

Known gaps vs. upstream Fossil CLI

The following upstream commands have no libfossil equivalent today:

• fossil ui / fossil server / fossil http — no web UI or HTTP admin server is shipped.
• fossil sync / fossil push / fossil pull — there is no CLI verb; sync is exposed via the Go API (Repo.Sync, Repo.XferHandler) but not as a subcommand.
• fossil update — merging a newer trunk into a checkout has no dedicated CLI command; use repo co plus repo merge as needed.
• fossil search — no CLI front-end for full-text search.
• fossil fts-config / FTS index management — no CLI command.

What's not supported yet

Beyond the gaps listed above, several broader features of upstream Fossil are not yet exposed by libfossil:

• Web UI / HTTP admin — no equivalent of fossil ui. The sync protocol handler exists as Repo.XferHandler() for programmatic embedding, but the HTML UI, wiki viewer, ticket tracker, and forum are not implemented.
• Interactive conflict resolution — there is no guided merge tool. Conflicts are listed via repo conflicts and resolved in your editor, by editing out fossil's conflict markers.
• Full-text search CLI — internal/search contains indexing and query primitives, but no CLI command surfaces them. Use the Go API directly.
• Ticket and forum subsystems — not implemented.
• Mirror / export bridges to Git, svn, and other systems — not implemented.

If any of these are load-bearing for your workflow, stay on upstream Fossil for now.

Interop patterns

Where libfossil shines is in environments where the upstream C binary is inconvenient to run:

• CGo-free CI pipelines — libfossil links statically with a pure-Go SQLite driver (db/driver/modernc), so clone/sync steps work on stripped container images and cross-compiled targets with no system dependencies.
• Embedding in Go services — the Repo handle can be used directly from a Go program to read history, extract artifacts, or accept pushes over a custom transport (WebSocket, NATS, libp2p).
• WASI / browser deployments — the db/driver/ncruces SQLite driver compiles to WebAssembly, enabling repo access from edge runtimes.

See examples/ (planned) for concrete starting points. Until those land, the cmd/libfossil package is the shortest working example: main.go wires the CLI, while driver_modernc.go registers the default driver and driver_ncruces.go shows the tagged WebAssembly-capable alternative.