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Stable release notification (web feed, mail list, thread, etc.)

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 4:33 am
by DynV
Hello,

I'm looking for stable release notification through email; of course a mail list does it directly but indirect methods are through a web feed (ie: RSS), or subscribing to a forum thread (that only make a new post per stable release and hopefully soon after, likely locked), and these are just examples.

Thank you kindly for your help

Re: Stable release notification (web feed, mail list, thread, etc.)

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 7:21 am
by Alien Valkyrie
I believe it's possible to subsribe to a whole forum (e.g. the Announcements forum). I'm not sure what effect exactly this entails, but it might be a starting point. Still, though, a web feed would be an idea.

Re: Stable release notification (web feed, mail list, thread, etc.)

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 8:27 am
by DynV
I want a single notification per stable release. Wouldn't subscribe to a whole forum get me more notification than that?

Re: Stable release notification (web feed, mail list, thread, etc.)

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 10:01 am
by madmax
In User Control Panel, Board Preferences tab, Edit notification options, mark EMAIL only for Someone creates a topic in a forum to which you are subscribed. Subscribe to the Announcements forum.

I haven't tried it, but I guess you would get only one mail per new topic. Not all topics in that forum are for stable releases, but it would be close.

You can also get an atom feed from github. Again, that would give you all github releases, not only stable ones.

Re: Stable release notification (web feed, mail list, thread, etc.)

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 10:08 am
by JTN
Our release checklist gives some idea what the current options are. Things you haven't mentioned:
  • The freeciv-announce mailing list is the obvious candidate. It does include beta/RC releases as well as stable ones (but only source code, not binaries), and very occasionally non-release traffic.
  • The @freeciv Twitter account is similar, but includes announcements for binaries.
  • The metaserver is the most focused and machine-readable source of information, but also the least accessible. It has separate 'follow tags' for stable source, stable binaries, particular versions, etc, so there's a place to look if you only care about e.g. stable Windows package. However, it's structured for polling (it's what the Freeciv clients themselves use to indicate that a newer version is available), not notification, and is not available in a standard format like an RSS feed; you'd have to do some scripting and state-tracking to turn it into email notifications.

Re: Stable release notification (web feed, mail list, thread, etc.)

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 10:56 am
by DynV
JTN wrote:
  • The freeciv-announce mailing list is the obvious candidate. It does include beta/RC releases as well as stable ones (but only source code, not binaries), and very occasionally non-release traffic.
  • The @freeciv Twitter account is similar, but includes announcements for binaries.
  • [...]
While making sure no stable release is skipped, which would I receive less notifications (there's twitter to email services).

Re: Stable release notification (web feed, mail list, thread, etc.)

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 11:43 am
by JTN
freeciv-announce. That gets one email per release (for the source code, so if you're after Windows packages you'll have to poll for a few days afterwards).

Another (unofficial) thing that exists is debian/watch / uscan; this looks for new files popping into existence at download servers (here's freeciv's config file). Again, polling-based; I don't know if there's anything that takes uscan and turns it into emails (it mainly exists for the Debian project's own purposes).

Re: Stable release notification (web feed, mail list, thread, etc.)

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 12:22 pm
by DynV
Although I would have preferred a single notification per release, I did mean binary (my fault for not mentioning). I looked at the twitter and saw there were little tweets so chose it.

In case someone else is interested (and if I forget how I did), to have the tweets emailed I made http://www.twitrss.me/twitter_user_to_rss/?user=freeciv then popped that in http://blogtrottr.com/ both steps very simple; to make the 1st just popped the twitter user name and submitted it, for the 2nd I put the former then my email and schedule type, submitted then confirmed my subscription by clicking a URL I received by email.

Thank you again JTN

Update 1:
To insert right after 1st sentence: As there's a delay between the source & binary, I know myself enough that I'd often forget to check back a couple days later; if there would not have been a delay, or but just a small one (few hours), it would have been perfect.