As reported on the [Fossil forum](https://fossil-scm.org/forum/forumpost/bc5f8f6e59?t=h).

Due to a change in fossil 2.12, the fossil instructions in the
[Sqlite README.md](https://sqlite.org/src/doc/trunk/README.md)
no longer work for recent versions of fossil.


```
mkdir ~/sqlite
cd ~/sqlite
fossil clone https://www.sqlite.org/src sqlite.fossil
fossil open sqlite.fossil 
directory ~/sqlite is not empty
use the -f or --force option to override

```

In my estimation **"fossil open"** should be changed to exempt the ***.fossil*** argument.

That seems like a reasonable long-term solution.  But it will take some time
for a version of Fossil that supports that to propagate through the
ecosystem.  So in the meantime, the README.md file has been adjusted to
give a procedure that *should* work for any version of Fossil after 2.0.