Ability to Watch a project but only for releases

[schrepfler]

I'm often interested in watching a project but I'm not really interested in all the conversations and issues it might have, I'm mostly interested in releases coming out. Would it be possible to have more options under the Watch project button?

[TPS]

I just sent this to support@ (Maybe this issue could be expanded to include mentioned subscriptions?)

Feature request: subscribe to any specific page of a project

As I mentioned, it'd be amazing to subscribe receive notifications of any page of a project. I'd personally love to subscribe to just releases &/or changelogs to many projects, for instance, but may want to even subscribe to any changes in, e.g., the skins subfolder.

Thanks for an amazing service! ☺

P.S.: I'll track this via https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/410 =)

[TPS]

Just received reply — here's hoping:

On Thu, Jul 2, 2015, 11:03 AM Ivan Žužak support@github.com wrote:

Thanks for the suggestion -- I've passed it along to the team working on notifications to consider.

Cheers, Ivan

[Gittyperson]

This would be a great feature.

[TomasValenta]

Not only great, but required for some repos ;)

[captn3m0]

An RSS feed for subscribing to a project release would be really cool.

[mkurz]

An RSS feed for subscribing to a project release would be really cool.

This is possible already. For example go to https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/releases, have a look in the html source of the page. Search for .atom and you will find urls to feeds: https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/releases.atom https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/tags.atom https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/commits/master.atom

So you get a feed with releases with a url like: https://github.com/USER/REPO/releases.atom

[rvanlaak]

Did also report this one to Github earlier last year :+1:

[maidmaid]

:+1: the Watch button should look like this :

[rvanlaak]

Think one extra option between 'not watching' and 'watching' would be enough, something like 'only watch releases'.

[amerikan]

This would be awesome. I always find myself going back to projects to check if there is a newer version.

[vidstige]

This would be awesome. Something simple, like the "only watch releases" suggested above.

[StubbsPKS]

Would also love this. I'm currently using a separate service to watch the releases.atom folder and have that service e-mail me when it changes.

[TPS]

@StubbsPKS For the record, what service do you use?

[StubbsPKS]

@TPS If This, Then That. https://ifttt.com/

[MatzFan]

This would make GitHub even more awesome - if that is possible.. 😄

[designosis]

I'm a bit stunned that this hasn't been addressed yet. There's a "Subscribe" notifications button in an issues thread, by not in releases?? The moment I star a project, I'm interested enough to know about code changes. But instead, I have to watch, and endure an inbox flooded with issue complaints (80% from people too lazy to RTFM). As a result, I don't watch projects, and am therefore denied one of the aspects of github that excites me the most: learning when something of great interest has been improved, and benefiting from the authors' great work.

TL/DR The ability to watch releases ONLY would be incredible useful. A subscribe button on a projects /releases page would do the trick, though @maidmaid's suggestion is even better.

[schrepfler]

For example, a project like scylla or rxjava can have hundreds of issues between releases. These have literally clogged up my email inbox even though the only thing I'm interested in is releases.

[ghost]

Seems like a must have feature. I went searching for it because I assumed it was possible.

[julkue]

If you want to watch releases of a project that is available in a package manager like e.g.: you might have success with the "Subscribe to releases" feature of libraries.io: It will send you an email when there are new releases. Btw: I'm not the author, maintainer of anything else of libraries.io, nor do I receive any provision or something else :laughing:

[mozggg]

This would be a killer feature. I'm a maintainer and watching for project gives me too many messages. But I often miss releases.

[BenjaminHCCarr]

I too maintain things for Homebrew, Homebrew-Cask, and Homebrew-FUSE, it would be EXTREMELY helpful to know when I need to re-package my brews, and write a new ruby script!

[BenjaminHCCarr]

@julmot some of us are the maintainers for those packagers, but we are under hundreds of issues, patches, etc, for the daily/weekly/yearly RC, and then release.

[schrepfler]

Really github, it's a no-brainer.

[antgel]

Is anyone listening? If so, at least providing easier access to the hidden atom URLs would be a start. :)

[rvanlaak]

Sounds like a no-brainer to me, from business perspective this will lower the shit-storm of insta-archive emails they are sending now for all issues / PRs :wink:

[antansk]

Need this feature as well. I'm glad I'm not the only one.

[Secbone]

+1

[alexblack]

Would love to see this

[Richard87]

Hi, I would also love to see this... And after getting tired of setting up ifttt.com, i made my own super simple tool (open to everyone)

releaser.richardhagen.no

[TPS]

@Richard87 Not open-source on GitHub? Also, since it has access to 1's account, it'd be good if it could pull the info from that to populate the /releases watchlist. I thought that's what you meant by super-simple (≠ easy, I guess). 😜

[Richard87]

Haha, I guess you are right @TPS :)

Just released it at https://github.com/Richard87/releaser There is some backend code that periodically does the actuall checking, but it will take some time to get that code ready to publish ;)

Anyway, what do you mean by

t'd be good if it could pull the info from that to populate the /releases watchlist

Right now I'm scanning the different repos people have put on a watchlist once every 30 minutes :) using the releases.atom feed from each project :)

[TPS]

@Richard87 https://github.com/Richard87/releaser/issues/1 😉

[SamHasler]

I tried creating an IFTTT app for email notifications based on the release.atom RSS feeds that mkurz describes in this comment: https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/410#issuecomment-163761492

However, when I got the first email the EntryContent just contained the EntryTitle because I don't think IFTTT found or parsed the element. (The feeds are valid. e.g.: http://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fhluk%2FCopyQ%2Freleases.atom )

I've also created a "zap" in zapier, and from the test email it shows (zapier is much better than IFTTT in that regard.) it looks like it should work.

[chadbr]

@github will we get good news here soon?

[rvanlaak]

Nope ;)

[schrepfler]

C'mon github!

[karakanb]

A basic need actually, @github c'mon guys!

[beruic]

As previously mentioned, there is an atom feed for every repo at https://github.com/USER/REPO/releases.atom

Whether it updates is up to the repo maintainer.

[designosis]

While a small % of github users undoubtedly use an RSS reader, and can subscribe to the atom feed directly, expecting the vast majority to integrate a 3rd-party, platform dependent application for this one simple purpose is, at best, poor UX.

Github's "Watch" tool is already in place, and ALMOST does exactly what everyone here needs, as @maidmaid's graphic perfectly describes.

[beruic]

I agree with you, but at least the atom feed is a start, and in my experience a lot of repo maintainers are very bad at posting releases to GitHub. I use slack to monitor the atom feeds (There is an integration freely available) and often I find out that a release has been pushed to a repository (e.g. PyPI for Python projects), but no release have been made on GitHub. If repo maintainers don't use the releases on GitHub, watching for releases is worthless. However having the release watch feature may be a good incentive for repo maintainers to use releases, so clearly @github should implement this ASAP.

[James-E-A]

Why is this not a thing yet?

This trivial, vital feature is now approaching its second anniversary of not being implemented (except in sketchy 3rd-party applications and homemade "solutions" like RSS watchers).

[jmdugan]

Looking for this feature now, too.

[maidmaid]

In fact, it would be better to have a Watch button that is semver compliant, like this:

[ghost]

Let's bug support@github.com together. 2 years passed, indeed. With this being relatively easy to implement.

[schrepfler]

Also github, do consider you will send less emails around the world, what you lose in a bit more processing you'll win in countless notifications which will become noops for the systems downstream.

[tziporaziegler]

I just contacted GitHub support and the suggestion was to create an Atom feed.

Hello, You can put .atom on the end of a project's releases URL to get to get an Atom feed. Subscribing to this feed will keep you up to date without watching the repository.

e.g. https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/releases.atom

Tracks these releases: https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/releases

I then asked if there is any chance that this feature will be implemented in the near future since it seems kind of silly to need to use an external tool to get notifications for a basic GitHub function and this is a popular request that has been ignored for 2 years. The response that I got was:

We're always working to improve GitHub and we consider every suggestion that our users send through to us. This sounds like it could be pretty useful so I've added your suggestion to our internal Feature Request List.

I can't promise that we will implement this feature now or in the future, but your feedback has definitely been noted and is super appreciated.

My suggestion would be for other users to contact GitHub as well.

[Croydon]

@tziporaziegler Have you included a link to this issue? :)

[kutsan]

I also contacted GitHub Support, they said:

Hi Kutsan,

Thanks for your feedback! We're always working to improve GitHub and we consider every suggestion we receive. I've added your request for the ability to watch a project only for releases to our internal Feature Request List.

We can't say if/when we may add a feature, however your feedback has definitely been recorded.

Cheers,

GitHub Support

[tziporaziegler]

@Croydon Yes, I did. This is the original message I sent to GitHub support:

Is there a way to get notifications for new releases without watching an entire repo?

Currently, I only see a way to watch an entire repository, yet this causes my inbox to get flooded with notifications I have zero interest in.

I found a related question, which was asked 2 years ago, and it seems like many users are looking for such a feature. Has this issue been addressed sometime over the past 2 years? https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/410

[James-E-A]

Not that I want to discourage GitHub from fixing this, but a solution I found for now, that's infinitely less spammy than Sibbell and IFTT, is https://github.com/Richard87/releaser