Git+GitHub is currently an amazing combination. Git has incredible functionality, tooling and resources - GitHub hosts a huge number of projects, supports everything from individuals to enterprises, stars are currently one of the more notable measures of project popularity and GitHub sponsors can help support developers and projects.
For work, popularity and large collaborative open source projects Git+GitHub are an easy choice - for my personal projects I think it is time to make a change.
Here is what I have noticed about my use for personal projects over the past 5 or so years:
- 99.9% of my work is as a single developer
- For personal projects my git use tends to be simple - mostly development on main with an occasional branch
- I browse code and changes on GitHub and appreciate the ReadMe.md functionality - but haven't made meaningful use of anything else
- I am not looking for popularity/fame/stars...
And here is why I'm moving to Fossil+Chisel:
- My current long-shot bet is that my interest in my personal code and projects outlives the current (largely friendly+happy+zero-cost-for-simple-use) incarnation of GitHub.
- I am not fully convinced that it will be possible, practical or desirable for me to host code online in 10/20/30 years - I'm currently moving to Chisel so that my code is hosted offsite, but long-term Fossil's strong, built-in, website/forge functionality is very, very, attractive.
- As much as possible I want to support what I love, believe in and care about, even if it is in small ways. Fossil is an interesting, long running, practical and functional developer tool that I want to support. A glance at the GitHub and Fossil homepages may give you a hint about my feelings - I want to be the Fossil homepage, not the GitHub homepage...
- Fun and learning!
The hedge with all this is that it is easy enough to mirror from Fossil to GitHub these days - so for now I am creating mirrors on GitHub...
If you end up trying Chisel I think one common workflow is to import an existing Git repo - I'm not the person you want to ask about the best way to do this but basically I would point you to:
- Fossil: Import And Export: Basics on importing and exporting.
- How to push Fossil local repository to remote hosting - Stack Overflow: The answer with 10 steps is a good description of the workflow I used - BUT at least in Q1 2025 it looks like the key to getting this work is in the Flint bug report below.
- Override project code - NOT working: Flint/Chisel currently has a bug where the 'Create Repository' screen gives you a critical and very helpful data entry field titled 'Override project code (Optional, but may be needed if pushing an already created repo to Chisel.)' - but it doesn't work. The workaround in the link is pretty simple, but maybe not when you are trying to figure out 'everything'.
Related Links and Notes:
- Fossil SCM (again) ยท Jim Kalafut - Perspective for someone who has tried and rejected Fossil as an option.
- Git has built-in support for serving bare repos over ssh and for a very basic website. For information on using Git without a forge see Git without a forge from Simon Tatham, the primary writer and maintainer of PuTTY and other projects.
- sourcehut - the hacker's forge and Codeberg.org are both very interesting GitHub alternatives
- Forgejo, Gitea and Gogs - self hosted GitHub alternatives
My current public repos on Chisel:
