This is part 2 of a series. See: http://www.scrye.com/wordpress/nirik/2012/10/22/fedoras-myriad-information-channels-part-1/ for part 1.

Package changes. Fedora the distribution is all about changes and updates to packages. How can you watch those changes happen?

First of all, packages commits are send to the http://lists.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/scm-commits list. Along with uploads of new versions to the lookaside cache and pkgdb changes (changes to acls on packages). Be ready if you subscribe for a pretty hefty flow of emails.

As with wiki changes you can also see these changes on the fedmsg bus:

  • #fedora-fedmsg on irc.freenode.net
  • The desktop/notify based fedmsg-notify applet ( yum install fedmsg-notify and configure/turn it on in settings)
  • The websocket based https://apps.fedoraproject.org/busmon

Changes are also reflected in our cgit instance at http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/ which also includes the ability to subscribe to a RSS feed of changes (simply add ‘/atom’ after the branch you are interested in).

Also, you can add yourself to the ‘watchcommits’ acl in pkgdb. Go to https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/PACKAGENAME and login and click the ‘watchcommits’ box for every branch you are interested in. You should start getting all commits diffs directly mailed to you. (You can also add yourself to watchbugzilla if you want to be CC’ed on any new bug reports against that package). Note that these acls are automatically approved when you ask for them, so there’s no delay waiting for someone to approve you.