Upstream publishing process

Upstream publishing process

When the maintainer of a software project has decided to make a new release available to the public, she needs to announce that the new release is available. The de-facto standard for this is freshmeat.net. This is a moderated site whose administrators receive a constant input of new projects and releases and publish the data on the site. It is possible to subscribe to certain projects and receive notifications via email whenever new version is available. It is also possible to get notifications about new projects, meeting specified criteria (for example, one may choose to get notifications on new multimedia projects). When a project is published in Freshmeat, links are specified for its versions' files, including the source code files, the maintainers' home page, and also links to package files - if these were provided by the maintainers.

Another way for the maintainer to publish information regarding her software project, is using Luau. This project has a "decentralized approach to software distribution" - users can subscribe to get project info _directly_ from the software developers, bypassing mediator sites such as Freshmeat. Of course, one has to be aware in the first place of a project in order to subscribe to it, so it's useful only for projects that already have users. However, it does enable maintainers to publish information about new releases quickly and directly to their own userbase. Luau, for now, doesn't have the abilities to resolve dependency, configuration or installation issues and so is useful mainly for users who want to stay on the "bleeding edge" of development.

Other custom ways of publishing information about new releases exist - per project. For example, for news about kernel releases one can consult the Linux Kernel or the Kernel Trap sites.

Main.AssafSagi - 31 Jan 2005