As I am using more and more open source software, I found it harder and harder to keep up-to-date with each project. How do I efficiently find out if a package has a newer release? I have been trying to visit the project web sites once in a while. This method is neither systematic nor labour saving.
The job of keeping up has been made easier for many software packages by the use of feeds. Most of the open-source packages I use are hosted on sourceforge. For instance, windirstat, the software we looked at yesterday. Sourceforge projects have project update feeds. I found that these feeds are generally of low-volume. Why not give it a try? Use RSS to get the updates.
To find out the feed URL, you must go to the project's Project Summary Page. For windirstat, it is http://sourceforge.net/projects/windirstat/.
You should find a link labeled View list of RSS feeds available for this project. Click on the RSS feeds link. Then, click the XML icon for Project news releases (including full text if you wish). Copy and paste the URL into a news aggregator (such as bottomfeeder).
The tasks of identifying and feeding the URLs into bottomfeeder are not that painful, and the payoff is very good. You will no longer need to visit each web site to find out if there is a newer release. And you will never miss the next super-duper release of your favourite software. Welcome to the quick(er) pace of open source software development, and many happy returns.
No comments:
Post a Comment