Today I added a couple examples to the Fedora wiki’s upstream release monitoring page that will allow maintainers to track new releases of Drupal modules. You can simply follow the template to add yours.
The upstream release monitoring system is provided through the courtesy of long-time Fedora contributor Till Maas, whose cnucnu software informs participating maintainers by filing a bug when the upstream releases a new copy of their software. Although most if not all maintainers monitor feeds and mailing lists, the bug is a reminder of what’s left to do, and doesn’t require the maintainer to stop what they’re doing when they get an email or RSS notification. Instead, they can trust their bug list.
As we are finishing up our last steps on the Insight project, we wanted to make sure that, since we packaged quite a number of Drupal modules to do our development and staging, we continued to keep on top of maintenance duties. Having the upstream releases monitored with automatic bugs was a natural next step. Of course, it also helps when you have a willing team of people who sign on for co-maintenance, or at least watch Bugzilla for those packages to pitch in when needed.
Thanks to Peter Borsa, Sven Lankes, Eric Christensen, and the seemingly omnipotent Jon Ciesla for their help maintaining these useful packages. It wouldn’t be possible without you guys.