Software prerequisites

Let’s install the software prerequisites, including Fossil itself! Feel free to bookmark this guide as a reference for setting up Fossil on your other computers.

The supported operating systems are:

Windows

Step-by-step version

Cygwin

The default Windows shell (aka “command prompt”) is awful. We’ll instead set up Cygwin and ZSH.

Installing Cygwin

Download the Cygwin installer HERE, then run it, and follow the instructions below.

_images/cygwin-1.png _images/cygwin-2.svg_images/cygwin-3.svg

Pick the following packages in the list (use the search box):

  1. wget

  2. ca-certificates

_images/cygwin-4.svg_images/cygwin-5.svg
Setup script

I wrote a script that does the remainder of the setup automagically. What you need to do is the following:

  1. Right-click on the newly created “Cygwin Terminal” shortcut on your Desktop, and select “Run as Administrator”.

  2. Copy the following line of code in its entirety, then paste into the terminal window (note: <ctrl>-v won’t work, so either use <shift>+<insert> or right-click and select “paste”):

    wget https://static.ecd.space/x/vc-workshop-201805/scripts/setup.sh -O setup.sh && bash setup.sh SETUP_CYGWIN_INSTALL=y SETUP_FOSSIL_SETTINGS=y
    _images/paste.png

  3. Press <enter> to run the command.

Other software

These are software packages you just need to download, then mindlessly click-through to install.

Tcl/Tk

ActiveTcl is needed to enable the built-in graphical diff feature in Fossil.

_images/tcl-1.svg_images/tcl-2.svg
Meld

Meld is an excellent graphical diff program. Given two versions of a text file, it allows you to quickly see what changed between them.

VS Code

VS Code is a great text editor (and more).

Mac OS X

In a terminal, copy-paste and run the following command in its entirety:

curl -fsSL -o setup.sh https://static.ecd.space/x/vc-workshop-201805/scripts/setup.sh && bash setup.sh SETUP_BREW_INSTALL=y SETUP_CHSH=y SETUP_FOSSIL_SETTINGS=y

You’re done!

Warning

Note that this changes your shell to ZSH. If you don’t want that, remove the SETUP_CHSH=y part before running.

Warning

This script will overwrite some of the global fossil settings. If you don’t want that, remove the SETUP_FOSSIL_SETTINGS=y part before running.

Debian GNU/Linux

(This might also work on Ubuntu, I haven’t checked.)

In a terminal, copy-paste and run the following command in its entirety:

curl -fsSL -o setup.sh https://static.ecd.space/x/vc-workshop-201805/scripts/setup.sh && bash setup.sh SETUP_CHSH=y SETUP_APT_MISC=y SETUP_APT_FOSSIL_BUILDDEP=y SETUP_BUILD_FOSSIL=y SETUP_FOSSIL_SETTINGS=y

You’re done!

Warning

Note that this changes your shell to ZSH. If you don’t want that, remove the SETUP_CHSH=y part before running.

Warning

This script will overwrite some of the global fossil settings. If you don’t want that, remove the SETUP_FOSSIL_SETTINGS=y part before running.