Discussion - Developing an automatic notification (for app maintainers) of the upcoming major release

Continuing the discussion from Release of NC 24 delayed:

What is the easiest way to inform developers when a new Nextcloud version is released?

It would be really awesome to auto-notify all app maintainers once beta1 is released of the nextcloud major version. Would you agree @dartcafe? I’m wondering if something like this could be implemented into the apps.nextcloud.com store so it would tell everyone maintaining applications on their respective issues repository.

Easiest flow would be:

  • Nextcloud 25 app development meta-issue on server github.
    • Link to each individual app repo with an issue for that app.

Now the meta-issue will auto-update as issues are opened, closed and resolved.

Here is a simple live example of a meta-issue tracking Nextcloud 24 support in nextcloudpi:

Nextcloud 24 Support issue 1447
image

2 Likes

IMHO, the simplest way would be putting link to all relevant places where google leads us to or where you would expect the information:

You may expect from the devolpers to regulary consume the normal sources and fetch relevant infomations by themselves.

Nice approach, but it seems a little overengeneered to me.

If all beta and RC versions are published via the beta update channel, an automatic notification should be already exist (ok, email notification for server admins is still a to do).

I’m rather sure every devolper runs a test stage with updates from the beta channel. And together with the release schedule, everything should be nice.

It seems that developer are continuously struggling to know when a new version of nextcloud is being released and it drops to users to file requests to them every three months. That is my experience, but it certainly does not apply to every maintainer.

Agreed. I’m wondering if some refinement could be made that connects to the existing github issues to further improve app support before a major release is in the wild.

Thanks for your thoughts! What I’ve found is users must make the effort to test and file a request to almost every individual maintainer to request new version support every few months; the majority of maintainers forget there is a new release coming up and often appreciate the reminder. Having to keep track of so many incompatible apps is the inspiration behind any apps not yet compatible with wiki posts for every new release.

It is very possible that the apps.nextcloud.com and the built-in server app store could be refined and make this whole process a lot smoother for maintainers and admins. Currently, there is no canonical way to know which apps are supported as an overview – I suppose this seem like a good idea to implement imo. Here is a related github issue for the appstore:

1 Like

@kesselb maybe you wanna join in here?