Fossil

Glossary
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There are several terms-of-art in Fossil that have specific meanings which are either not immediately obvious to an outsider or which have technical associations that can lead someone to either use the terms incorrectly or to get the wrong idea from someone using those terms correctly. We hope to teach users how to properly “speak Fossil” with this glossary.

Each definition is followed by a bullet-point list of clarifying details. These are not part of the definition itself.

Project

A collection of one or more computer files that serve some conceptually unified purpose, which purpose changes and evolves over time, with the history of that project being a valuable record.

Repository

A single file that contains all historical versions of all files in a project, which can be cloned to other machines and synchronized with them. Jargon: repo.

~/museum/ where one stores valuable fossils work/ projects from $DAYJOB home/ personal at-home projects other/ clones of Fossil itself, SQLite, etc.
scale=0.8
box "~/museum/" fit
move right 0.1
line right dotted
move right 0.05
box invis "where one stores valuable fossils" ljust

arrow down 50% from first box.s then right 50%
box "work/" fit
move right 0.1
line dotted
move right 0.05
box invis "projects from $DAYJOB" ljust

arrow down 50% from 2nd vertex of previous arrow then right 50%
box "home/" fit
move right 0.1
line dotted right until even with previous line.end
move right 0.05
box invis "personal at-home projects" ljust

arrow down 50% from 2nd vertex of previous arrow then right 50%
box "other/" fit
move right 0.1
line dotted right until even with previous line.end
move right 0.05
box invis "clones of Fossil itself, SQLite, etc." ljust

Check-in

A version of the project’s files that have been committed to the repository. It is a snapshot of the project at an instant in time, as seen from a single check-out’s perspective. Synonyms: version, snapshot, revision, commit. Sometimes styled “CHECKIN”, especially in command documentation where any valid checkin name can be used.

Check-out

A set of files extracted from a repository that represent a particular check-in of the project.

Embedded Documentation

Serving as an alternative to Fossil’s built-in wiki, the embedded documentation feature stores the same type of marked-up text files, but under Fossil’s powerful version control features.