Allow "subscription" to modules for notification

[szabgab]

I'd like to be able to "subscribe" to several modules or distributions and get notified (by e-mail or via an RSS feed) when new versions of those modules are uploaded.

Extra bonus would be to be alerted that the list of dependencies has changed.

I'd also like to be notified when one of the dependencies of the modules I "subscribed" to is uploaded.

[chenryn]

I like this idea~Is anyone implement it?

[oalders]

Not implemented yet. Still waiting on a volunteer. :)

[chenryn]

well, just saw metacpan-web source for a while, easy to compare release.version by status:latest and favorites.release by user:id. But no idea for send email actively. Maybe a job for cpan mirror but not metacpan web?

[oalders]

I don't think it's a job for a cpan mirror, since the mirrors really just serve static files. Ideally you'd want a new ElasticSearch type which would be a log of events (distribution upload, module X moves from dist A to dist B, author Y has uploaded a new module). You could then maybe have some "follow" buttons in the UI for modules, distributions and authors and you'd have a custom RSS feed which would provide your version of the feed. Your feed could also be incorporated into your MetaCPAN front page (a bit like Github https://github.com/oalders?tab=activity).

I think that would be a first step. As far as email delivery goes, we would then later decide how to handle that or whether to leave that to some 3rd party to provide as an add-on, since RSS may already cover a lot of use cases.

Another option would be not to have the ES activity type but to serve up the feeds on the fly, depending on how intense the queries are. You'd still need to log the follow preferences somewhere in ElasticSearch, though.

[ranguard]

Moved to wish list: https://github.com/CPAN-API/cpan-api/wiki/Wishlist

[p16i]

@oalders I would like to contribute to this task. How can I start implementing it?

[oiami]

@goonnow you could start from this https://github.com/CPAN-API/metacpan-developer, how set it up is on README.md and if you have question, you can ask on IRC #metacpan :)

[oalders]

@goonnow, @oiami has the right idea. The best way is to get started with the VM. Now, as far as this issue goes, I guess it's not a well known fact (in fact I had to double check just now) that releases actually already have RSS feeds:

https://metacpan.org/feed/distribution/Plack

We really should make this more obvious on the site. That would be a good first step. I'd prefer the feed over sending email as that has its own complexities.

On a similar note there are also author feeds:

https://metacpan.org/feed/author/RJBS

We could look at tweaking the author feed to being a time-sorted list of everything they release and also everything they ++, which I think is also interesting on an author level, since it leads you to discover new modules etc.

We also really need to do a better job of making people aware of author feeds. There is likely an appropriate icon already in the repository that we could use for this.

[rwstauner]

Does this overlap with #799?

[p16i]

Thanks @oiami , @oalders . Let me set up the VM first :)

[oalders]

@rwstauner Yeah, I think this is essentially the same thing, with #799 just having a greater scope.

[oiami]

I'm trying to make the feed is more visible by adding the icon rss feed in somewhere in the page, how about in the top right of page before the table (for those page with table author and release) like

or any idea ? I don't use the feed icon that we have but I add the new one since I think using the same icon can confuse user when there are 2 rss icons the same page. I'm afraid that user will think they are the same feed but actually they aren't.

[ranguard]

Looks like done in #1230