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Would love github to add social features to opt-in to communication from maintainers. There is no good way today to email changelogs to your users.

maxloh 5y ago
They will if they subscribed to your repo's new releases (with GitHub's "watch" function)
- eatonphil 5y ago
  The problem is that this subscribes them to everything. I used to use watch but I could care less about every individual commit on anything other than projects I'm actively working on. Watch is not a good substitute for a way to learn about important changes on an infrequent, regular basis (i.e. once a month emails).
  - matthews2 5y ago
    Try clicking the watch button now. It changed a while ago, and you can narrow it down to certain events (releases, commits, issues, PRs, etc.)
    - eatonphil 5y ago
      Gotcha that's a good improvement. But this still only works by showing a visual change in your feed at the time of the release. What if I care about software but don't spend all day on Github's logged in homepage/activity feed? Email is the only reliable way to send/receive important updates for any meaningful project.
      - iampims 5y ago
        You get an email if you subscribe to releases.
        eatonphil 5y ago
        Huh, I see releases in the Github UI and I never get release emails. Maybe I have an email filter I forgot about.
        maxloh 5y ago
        You need to change your notification settings in GitHub. Maybe sending you a email of new notifications is not the default option.
eatonphil 5y ago
Yes this is frustrating. I just changed my repo's first few lines to suggest subscribing to the mailing list rather than being an intro to the project. I've seen that a few times before and used to think it was weird. But now that I've got updates I want people to know about I'm more interested in just making sure people who are interested have access to info.
brimble 5y ago
Email changelogs? WTF? Is there not RSS for releases, that people can subscribe to if they want those kinds of notices? [EDIT] Answer appears to be "yes, there is" (append ".atom" to the releases URL for a repo) with the caveat that the handling of pre-releases is less than ideal.

maxloh 5y ago

They will if they subscribed to your repo's new releases (with GitHub's "watch" function)

eatonphil 5y ago
The problem is that this subscribes them to everything. I used to use watch but I could care less about every individual commit on anything other than projects I'm actively working on. Watch is not a good substitute for a way to learn about important changes on an infrequent, regular basis (i.e. once a month emails).
- matthews2 5y ago
  Try clicking the watch button now. It changed a while ago, and you can narrow it down to certain events (releases, commits, issues, PRs, etc.)
  - eatonphil 5y ago
    Gotcha that's a good improvement. But this still only works by showing a visual change in your feed at the time of the release. What if I care about software but don't spend all day on Github's logged in homepage/activity feed? Email is the only reliable way to send/receive important updates for any meaningful project.
    - iampims 5y ago
      You get an email if you subscribe to releases.
      - eatonphil 5y ago
        Huh, I see releases in the Github UI and I never get release emails. Maybe I have an email filter I forgot about.
        maxloh 5y ago
        You need to change your notification settings in GitHub. Maybe sending you a email of new notifications is not the default option.

eatonphil 5y ago

Yes this is frustrating. I just changed my repo's first few lines to suggest subscribing to the mailing list rather than being an intro to the project. I've seen that a few times before and used to think it was weird. But now that I've got updates I want people to know about I'm more interested in just making sure people who are interested have access to info.

brimble 5y ago

Email changelogs? WTF? Is there not RSS for releases, that people can subscribe to if they want those kinds of notices? [EDIT] Answer appears to be "yes, there is" (append ".atom" to the releases URL for a repo) with the caveat that the handling of pre-releases is less than ideal.