What Is An "Event"?

In Fossil, and "event" is a special kind of wiki page that is associated with a point in time rather than having a page name. Each event causes a single entry to appear on the Timeline Page. Clicking on the hyperlink of the timeline entry cause a jump to the wiki content for the event. The wiki content, the timeline entry text, the time of the event, and the timeline background color can all be edited.

As with check-ins, wiki, and tickets, all events automatically synchronize to other repositories. Hence, events can be viewed, created, and edited off-line. And the complete edit history for events is maintained for auditing purposes.

Possible uses for events include:

• Milestones. Project milestones, such as releases or beta-test cycles, can be recorded as events. The timeline entry for the event can be something simple like "Version 1.2.3" perhaps with a bright color background to draw attention to the entry and the wiki content can contain release notes, for example.

• Blog Entries. Blog entries from developers describing the current state of a project, or rational for various design decisions, or roadmaps for future development, can be entered as events.

• Process Checkpoints. For projects that have a formal process, events can be used to record the completion or the initiation of various process steps. For example, an event can be used to record the successful completion of a long-running test, perhaps with performance results and details of where the test was run and who ran it recorded in the wiki content.

• News Articles. Significant occurrences in the lifecycle of a project can be recorded as news articles using events. Perhaps the domain name of the canonical website for a project changes, or new server hardware is obtained. Such happenings are appropriate for reporting as news.

• Announcements. Changes to the composition of the development team or acquisition of new project sponsors can be communicated as announcements which can be implemented as events.

No project is required to use events. But events can help many projects stay better organized and provide a better historical record of the development progress.

Viewing Events

Because events are considered a special kind of wiki, users must have permission to read wiki in order read events. Enable the "j" permission under the /Setup/Users menu in order to give specific users or user classes the ability to view wiki and events.

Events show up on the timeline. Click on the hyperlink beside the event title to see the details of the event.

Creating And Editing Events

There is a hyperlink under the /Wiki menu that can be used to create new events. And there is a submenu hyperlink on event displays for editing existing events.

Users must have check-in privileges (permission "i") in order to create or edit events. In addition, users must have create-wiki privilege (permission "f") to create new events and edit-wiki privilege (permission "k") in order to edit existing events.

If the first non-whitespace text of the event wiki content is <title>...</title> then that markup is omitted from the body of the wiki pages and is instead displayed as the page title.