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?

[Ardakilic]

@markg85 Why would OP or repo owner close and give up on this, because GitHub doesn't care, or has not implemented this yet ?

[MV10]

FYI, this isn't an "official" github repo of any kind. Take a look at the readme, the owner just tracks github requests of interest here.

I know people have contacted github about it in the past (apparently you have to send an email, github has no repo we can get to), but I kind of doubt this specific issue thread is on their radar.

[markg85]

@Ardakilic I'm sorry, i didn't read apparently. I came here searching for a way to monitor releases in a github repo. I blindly assumed this issue to be a feature request for github itself. Sorry for that, i removed my message :)

[pyatyispyatil]

Hey guys! I wrote a bot for this issue for telegram. It is notify across 5 minutes after publication of the new release or tag with full changelog. This tool is not so stable, but in any case you can try to use it: https://github.com/figuralmind/github-releases-notify-bot

[vikaspotluri123]

In addition to @gloooom's bot, you can also use IFTTT until this (hopefully) gets implemented natively! Github creates an atom feed for a projects releases using the username/repo/releases.atom schema (for example, Atom's release feed can be found at https://github.com/atom/atom/releases.atom)

I've successfully used the rss feed as the if parameter and email as the then parameter to get notified when projects get new releases 😄

Not sure if Zapier supports something like this

[phil294]

If you combine an RSS feed (like https://github.com/userhere/repohere/releases.atom) with an email subscription service like https://blogtrottr.com/, this will do exactly what you desire.

[warudin]

This is still not possible on GitHub itself? That seems like a pretty big shortcoming to me, I would love such a feature.

[guirto]

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

Thanks, man. Added to Thunderbird. Never gonna miss another release.

[jlsjonas]

Too bad so much open source still relies on Github; switched to GitLab a long time ago for lack of default features (amongst other things)

[axi92]

https://coderelease.io/ does a good job!

[dapengzhang0]

Now github has the ability to Watch a project for release only! I think the issue can be closed.

[dalDevelo]

It's LIVE! 👍🏼

[Croydon]

[becca]

👋 there! thank you all so much for posting this issue and providing great detail to help us deliver this feature.

excited to continue delivering more of the features you need in the new year!

[AlexWayfer]

Is there any possibility to auto-watch for releases in starred projects?…

[schrepfler]

VICTORYYYYYYYY!!!!!

[joehillen]

What's the CC name for release email notifications? https://help.github.com/articles/about-email-notifications/

[rubaboo]

Yay.

[jonashaag]

This is a Puppeteer script I've used for automatically converting starred repositories to Release-only watched repositories.

const child_process = require('child_process')
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer')
const devices = require('puppeteer/DeviceDescriptors')
const iPhone = devices['iPhone 6']

const USER = 'youruser'
const PW = 'xxxxxx'

// Get starred repos
let page = 1
let urls = []
while (1) {
  const cmd = `curl -s "https://api.github.com/users/${USER}/starred?per_page=100&page=${page}"`
  res = JSON.parse(child_process.execSync(cmd))
  if (!res.length) break
  for (let r in res) {
    urls.push(r.html_url)
  }
  page++
}

// Update to release-only
(async () => {
  const browser = await puppeteer.launch()
  const page = await browser.newPage()
  await page.emulate(iPhone)
  await page.goto('https://github.com/login')
  await page.type('[name=login]', USER)
  await page.type('[name=password]', PW)
  await page.click('[type=submit]')
  setTimeout(async () => {
    for (let url of urls) {
      console.log(url)
      await page.goto(url)
      if (await page.$('[value=included].selected')) {
        await page.click('[value=release_only]')
      }
    }
    await browser.close()
  }, 1000)
})()

[jonashaag]

It doesn't look like GitHub's API supports Release-only subscriptions at this point.

[ghadly]

🎉 it's now live, Good job github 😍

[xgdgsc]

Hope we can watch only stable releases, not those pre-releases.

[JensSpanier]

Where can I see the repositories I'm currently watching (releases only)? https://github.com/watching doesn't list those repositories.

[panvid]

Same question for me: I can't see repos which I only watch the releases. :/

Another point: Only watching to releases throws me out of the "how many people watch this release" amount. That is not that good for smaller projects, which have benefit from this type of "reputation".

[MartinX3]

@dpauli Yes, so I star every project, I want to watch for releases.

[janos]

@xgdgsc apparently there is not much control or even visibility (@Virinum @dpauli) which project releases are watched. There is also a problem with projects that mark releases only with tags. NewReleases gives a bit more control to exclude pre-releases, even filter versions with regexes to exclude annoying frequent alpha/beta/rc/dev versions, however they are annotated. And also it sends notifications for tags. It still does not solve the reputation problem, though.

[lukastribus]

Watching should also include release notifications. This is currently not the case, so you get every single message in issues and PR's, but no release notification :(

[jonashaag]

This has to be the most badly designed GitHub feature ever :(

[schrepfler]

Really guys, please open a different issue, most of us are happy with this.

[schittli]

It's crazy how fast the Microsoft Spirit took place. It's a shame: every hobby programmer Github notification alternative is much more powerful and useful. Maybe M$ could think about buying peoples, as they already have the service.

It's great that we still have great alternatives.

[schrepfler]

I submitted the issue, I'm happy with the issue. The issue is closed. If you don't like it, submit a separate issue.

[mackelito]

We should be able to get Notifications on both releases and issue updates... Perhaps have watch on a file? CHANGELOG.md would work for most of my cases :)

[beruic]

@mackelito as @schrepfler wrote: "The issue is closed. If you don't like it, submit a separate issue."

[mackelito]

@mackelito as @schrepfler wrote: "The issue is closed. If you don't like it, submit a separate issue."

🙄... ...But yes.. you are correct (you smartypants you 😉)

[dimisjim]

I get no email notification for a new release :( even though I am watching only for releases :(

[AlexWayfer]

I get no email notification for a new release :( even though I am watching only for releases :(

This issue is feature request. The feature is working for the most of people. So, you had better to write to support.

[multlurk]

Please fix this issue "Without adding a message to the release, it only counts as a "tag" and not as a full release". So I do not receive notifications for projects that do not contain a release message in their releases.

[beruic]

@multlurk IMHO it seems like something you should create a new issue for

[multlurk]

@beruic done https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/1715

[core-code]

can we please have another Atom feed that excludes pre-release releases?

[James-E-A]

This has never worked right for me as-implemented by GH.

Why did you shut your service down before verifying its replacement's suitability, @Richard87??

[Ardakilic]

There's another service called ReleaseBell: https://releasebell.com/ , I haven't actually checked though, saw on awesome-selfhosted repository.

However, I still use my self-hosted tool, AlertHub, on a cheap VPS without issues: https://github.com/Ardakilic/alerthub . I get email and push notifications on the releases I set.

[AlexWayfer]

Why did you shut your service down before verifying its replacement's suitability, @Richard87??

Look at https://gitpunch.com/

I'm still using it for projects which use tags without GitHub Releases.

[captn3m0]

@core-code You can run an existing feed with the RSS-Bridge Filter (as a rudimentary Yahoo pipe) to filter out the pre-releases.

My public rss-bridge server has the filter bridge enabled for eg: https://rss-bridge.bb8.fun/#bridge-Filter

As an example:

• All Kubernetes releases
• corresponding atom feed for all releases
• Blocking regex: (beta|alpha) to block out the beta/alpha releases.
• Final RSS Feed with filter applied: View as HTML, Atom

Edit: This is a hack. Would love if GitHub actually supported different release feeds.

[core-code]

@captn3m0 this only works for repositories which consistently tag their pre-releases with "alpha" or "beta". the GitHub Atom feed doesn't even contain the information whether a release is a pre-release. therefore there is no general way to filter all pre-releases. a solution would entail GitHub adding the pre-release status annotation to the feed or creating additional feeds.

[azban]

this is now available under watch -> custom -> releases

[core-code]

nice, but this doesn't address the Atom feed issue

[James-E-A]

Really guys, please open a different issue, most of us are happy with this.

@schrepfler Pardon…?

It literally doesn't work. I have not got ONE release notification since Releaser closed down, despite the following being set:

[schrepfler]

Really guys, please open a different issue, most of us are happy with this.

@schrepfler Pardon…?

It literally doesn't work. I have not got ONE release notification since Releaser closed down, despite the following being set:

Maybe it's something about how you perform the release. It works for me

[Croydon]

This is not a new feature. It is available since November 2018

https://github.blog/changelog/2018-11-27-watch-releases/

As other people already pointed out, if you want further improvement you should reach out to GitHub Support or at least open a new issue here or post in the GitHub forum.

Continuing to post here well have zero effects. I'm going to unsubscribe from this issue now too.