There are many excellent free and open-source software projects, but keeping track of all she can be difficult, especially if they don’t have blogs or other traditional communication channels. Fortunately, you can still keep track of most software projects in one simple feed, thanks to some hidden functions and the magic of RSS.
Part of my work as a news editor Geek Follow hundreds of software projects on interesting updates and changes. These changes can often be in news articles, such as our reporting of game emulators and self-hosted apps, or serve as inspiration for guides and editors. Unfortunately, some of those projects do not have blogs, social media accounts or other simple ways to keep track of them, but there are temporary solutions.
First get an RSS reader
The core component of this setup is an RSS reader. You may have used an RSS reader for keeping track of news, blogs and podcasts, but they are also excellent tools for monitoring software projects. Even if a certain project does not have a full blog with a working RSS feed, one of the software repositories or social media accounts can offer a feed.
Remark: RSS -Feeds and atomic feeds are different technologies, but most RSS readers are compatible with both sizes, so I use RSS and atom for this guide.
If you do not yet have RSS reader, I recommend starting with Feedly or Inoreader, which can synchronize your feeds and which items you have read on multiple devices. There are also many RSS clients for desktop and mobile platforms, some of which can be fully executed on your local device, and some that connect to cloud services. For example, I use the Reeder app on my Mac. Most RSS services and customers can import and export your feeds with OPML files, so if you want to move to another reader in the future, the process is just a few clicks.
Once your RSS reader is ready, you can start adding feeds for software projects. In the Feedly Web app, for example, click on ‘Follow sources’ in the sidebar and stick the RSS feed -Eurl.
You can organize your feeds in different folders. I have all my software feeders in one folder, but maybe you want to sort them by platform or category, such as grouping all emulators.
Add blogs
Firstly, some software projects have special blogs with functioning RSS FEEDS. I will use the dolphin emulator as an example. Dolphin has hosted a blog at this web address:
https:
If you stick that into some RSS readers, they will automatically find the RSS feed in the HTML source code of the page. If that does not work, you may need to provide the direct RSS food connection, which in the case of Dolphin is this:
https:
Some blogs, such as the blog of the Dolphin Project, have an RSS button that links directly to the feed – you simply copy the link and stick them into your reader. The button is usually a dot with two curved lines that expand out, sometimes with an orange color.
If you still cannot find the feed and your RSS reader cannot find it, it may still be in the source code of the page. With the blog open in your browser, right-click on an empty place and select the option to view the page source.
Then open the ‘Find in Page’ tool, usually the CTRL+F or CMD+F -Snelt test, and look for “alternative” on the page. If you see a link tag with “Atom” or “RSS” if the type, that should be an RSS feed link.
The extra step of digging by HTML code is certainly annoying, but it should not be necessary with most sites and reader apps.
Add Github -Feeds
If a software project is hosted on Github, or 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 “user” by the Github account that owns the repository, you can add this RSS feed to keep track of releases:
https:
This follows all commits to a repository:
https:
This follows all new tags that some projects use in addition to or instead of releases:
https:
This follows all activities of a specific user in all (public) repositories, such as commits, Pull requests and provides comments:
https:
Time for some examples. The Caliber Ebook Manager uses Github for its code positor and new versions are correctly set as releases on Github. That means that I can follow new releases with this feed:
https:
In the meantime, the Dolphin Emulator Repository does not use the releases on Github function, but it does create new tags for every release. If you wanted to know when a new release was available or was available soon, you should add the tags feed:
https:
What if a software project does not use releases or tags and the regular commit feed is too noisy? You can still set a feed that changes An File in a repository. Caliber, for example, has a Changelog text file that has been updated for every release. If you want a feed for changes to that specific file, open it on Github and click the History button.
This brings you to the commit history of the file, with this URL:
https:
To get an RSS feed of that history, just add “.atom” at the end:
https:
Most projects use the Tags or Releases function for new versions, but if you want to follow changes outside of new releases, the Commit Feeds are useful.
Add Gitlab -Feeds
If a project is hosted on a Gitlab repository, you will get a lot of the same RSS functions as Github. However, Gitlab is useful enough to offer RSS buttons, so that you don’t have to make your own feed -Url’s. For example, if you visit the repository for the Freedesktop SDK, the pages of the releases and tags have both RSS buttons in the right corner of the page.
You just copy and stick that URL into your RSS reader, and you’re done. Just like with Github projects, some repositories use releases and tags for new versions, some use only tags and a few use either.
Bronforce -Feeds Add
Sourceforge is not as popular today as it once was, but it also has great RSS nutrition support. With the help of the 7-ZIP repository as an example, you can find RSS button couplings in the sections for project activity, news, Wiki and files.
Just like Gitlab, the RSS -Links are clearly visible on every page, so you don’t have to dig for them. Github, take notes.
Blusky and Mastodon -Feeds Add
Although Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X and other social media platforms do not offer RSS -FEEDS for individual accounts, it is an option with bluesky and mastodon. If a certain software project (or one of the most important developers) has an account about bluesky or mastodon, this can be a great way to keep track of news and upcoming events.
For a Bluesky account you only need the URL to the profile and then add “/RSS” to the end. For example, the profile of the Blender project has this web address:
https:
The RSS feed for that profile looks like this:
https:
For Mastodon you simply add .rss at the end of a profile -Url. Here is the profile page for the blender project on the Mastodon.Social server:
https:
The RSS feed looks like this:
https:
If a software project has accounts on both sites, you may want to consider both adding both. That can give you double messages in your reader, but if one account stops working or is deleted, you will still get messages from the other. This is especially important for mastodone profiles – if the account goes from one server to another, your feed will not be migrated automatically.
These are the most ways in which I follow updates and general news for software projects, even if they do not have a functioning blog or other communication channels. These tips do not deal with every conceivable scenario, such as projects that only communicate through Discord channels, but they helped me to monitor hundreds of projects of one feed.
