Can’t Keep Up With Open-Source Software Updates? Here’s How I Do It

There are many excellent free and open source software projects, but follow them all can be difficult, especially when they do not have blogs or other traditional communication channels. Fortunately, you can always keep track of most software projects in a simple flow, thanks to certain hidden features and the magic of RSS.

Part of my work here as editor -in -chief at Geek. Monitoring hundreds of software projects for updates and interesting changes. These changes can often transform into press articles, such as our cover of game emulators and self-heberled applications, or serve as inspiration for guides and editorials. Unfortunately, some of these projects do not have blogs, social media accounts or other easy ways for me to follow them, but there are bypass.

The central component of this configuration is an RSS player. You may have used an RSS player to keep track of news, blogs and podcasts, but these are also excellent tools to monitor software projects. Even if a given project does not have a complete blog with an RSS flow that works, one of its software or social media accounts could provide a flow.

Note: RSS feeds and atom flows are different technologies, but most RSS readers are compatible with both formats, so I will use RSS and the atom interchangeable for this guide.

If you don’t already have an RSS player, I recommend that you start with Feedly or Inoreader, which can synchronize your flows and the elements you have read on several devices. There are also many RSS customers for desktop and mobile platforms, some of which can work entirely on your local device, and some who connect to cloud services. I use the Reeder application on my Mac, for example. Most RSS services and customers can import and export your flows with OPML files, so if you want to go to another reader in the future, the process is only a few clicks.

Once your RSS player is ready, you can start adding flows for software projects. For example, in the Fedly web application, you simply click “Follow the sources” in the sidebar and glue the RSS power url.

You can organize your flows in different files. I have all my software flows in a single file, but you may want to sort them by platform or category, such as grouping all emulators.

Adding blogs

First, some software projects have dedicated blogs with RSS flows that work. I will use the dolphin emulator as an example. Dolphin has a blog hosted on this web address:

        https:

    

If you stick this in some RSS readers, they will automatically find the RSS feed in the HTML source code of the page. If this does not work, you may need to provide the direct RSS feed link, which in the case of Dolphin is as follows:

        https:

    

Some blogs, such as the blog of the Dolphin project, have an RSS button that connects directly to the flow – you simply copy the link and glue it to your reader. The button is generally an icon of one point with two curved lines developing outwards, sometimes with an orange color.

If you still can’t find the flow and your RSS player does not find it, it could always be in the source code of the page. With the blog open in your browser, right -click on an empty point and select the option to display the page source.

Then, open the “search for page” tool, which is usually the CTRL + F or CMD + F shortcut, and search for “alternative” on the page. If you see a link tag with “Atom” or “RSS” as a type, it should be an RSS feed link.

The additional step to dig into the HTML code is certainly boring, but that should not be necessary with most sites and reading applications.

Addition of github flows

If a software project is hosted on Github, or if it has an official mirror on Github, you can follow it with various RSS feeds. If you replace “repo” with the name of the repository and “the user” with the Github account which has the repository, you can add this RSS feed to follow the versions:

        https:

    

This follows all the commitments in a repository:

        https:

    

This follows all the new tags, which certain projects use next to or instead of the versions:

        https:

    

This follows all the activities of a user given in all (public) benchmarks, such as the commits, the traction requests and the comments: the comments:

        https:

    

Time for some examples. The Ebook Manager caliber uses GitHub for its code repository and the new versions are properly configured as versions on Github. This means that I can follow new versions with this flow:

        https:

    

Meanwhile, the Dolphin emulator’s repository does not use the functionality of versions on Github, but it creates new tags for each version. If you wanted to know when a new version was available or to come, you will have to add the flow of tags:

        https:

    

What if a software project does not use versions or beacons, and the regular validation flow is too noisy? You can always configure a flow that monitors changes A File in a repository. For example, Caliber has a Changelog text file which is updated for each version. If you want a flow for changes to this specific file, you open it on Github, then click the Historical button.

This takes you to the history of the validation of the file, with this URL:

        https:

    

To get an RSS feed for this story, simply add “.atom” at the end like this:

        https:

    

Most projects use the functionality of tags or versions for new versions, but if you want to monitor changes outside new versions, validation flows are useful.

Addition of gitlab flows

If a project is hosted on a Gitlab benchmark, you get several of the same RSS features as Github. However, Gitlab is useful enough to provide RSS buttons, so you don’t have to create your own power url. For example, if you visit the FREEDESKTOP SDK repository, the pages of the versions and beacons have both RSS buttons in the upper right corner of the page.

You copy and glue this URL in your RSS player, and you have finished. As with GitHub projects, some benchmarks use versions and beacons for new versions, some only use tags and some use none.

Addition of source forces flow

Sourceforge is not as popular today as they are, but it also has excellent RSS feed. Using the 7-Zip frame of reference as an example, you can find RSS button links on project activity sections, news, wiki and files.

Like Gitlab, RSS links are clearly visible on each page, so you don’t have to go dig for them. Github, take notes.

Addition of bluesky and mastodon flows

Even if Facebook, Instagram, Twitter / X and other social media platforms do not provide RSS feed for individual accounts, this is an option with Bluesky and Mastodon. If a given software project (or one of the main developers) has an account on Bluesky or Mastodon, this can be a great way to follow the news and upcoming events.

For a Bluesky account, you just need the profile URL, then add “/ RSS” at the end. For example, the profile of the Blender project has this web address:

        https:

    

The RSS feed for this profile looks like this:

        https:

    

For mastodon, you simply add .rss at the end of a profile URL. Here is the profile page of the Blender project on the Mastodon.social server:

        https:

    

The RSS feed looks like this:

        https:

    

If a software project has accounts on the two sites, you may want to consider adding both. This could give you double publications in your reader, but if an account stops working or is deleted, you will always get messages from the other. This is particularly important for Mastodon profiles – if the account goes from one server to another, your flow will not be migrated automatically.

These are most of the ways that I follow updates and general news for software projects, even if they do not have a functional blog or other communication channels. These tips do not cover all the imaginable scenarios, such as projects that communicate only through discord, but they helped me keep an eye on hundreds of projects from a single flow.