The year 2018 was amazing for us! NewReleases started as a simple service to send email and Slack notifications and we grew to a project that gives a spectrum of possibilities to play with and allows you to stay focused, by receiving the most information you need with the frequency you choose. After the initial release in July we have made numerous improvements and introduces many new features.
First new feature was importing projects using GitHub stars. Not long after that, after extensive testing and tweaking, we made possible to import projects from project dependency files: Python requirements.txt, Ruby Gemfile, PHP composer.json, Node.js NPM and Yarn package.json and Go go.mod. Another convenient way to add projects is to create a list of project links and use import from File with links feature. You can even import several files of the same format at once. The interface is very familiar with GitHub stars import feature.
One special Easter egg is also available. The easiest possible way to add projects ever. Just replace top level domain in the address bar of any of our 10 supported providers with newreleases.io and hit enter. You will be automatically redirected to our website to add a project to track. Checkout this short demonstration video.
Support for Java Maven source provider is implemented, as our 10th provider, with pom.xml dependencies import.
First such feature was implemented in November. We made possible for notifications to include GitHub release notes for new version releases from GitHub, PyPI, Packagist, Gems, NPM and Yarn notifications.
After that, we have extended the Slack feature to include the possibility to add multiple Slack channels from different workspaces. You can choose to which channel or channels you would like to receive notifications for every project.
As a New Year’s present from us, Webhooks integration is made possible. Now you can easily include NewReleases in your development infrastructure automation. Connect your favorite continuous integration software with NewReleases or use NewReleases’ notifications to trigger a build or to file a bug for every new release of the project you are tracking. Or even setup a Webhook to get notifications to your internal messaging app. More about the implementation and to test your endpoint at https://newreleases.io/webhooks.
For all this new features and ways to add the projects, our well known options are available, choose email frequency and filter based on regex expressions, updated/overridden releases and GitHub pre-releases.
One of the things we are most proud of is communication with our users. Based on the feedback we got from you, our users, we have implemented three most requested features.
In the future, we will continue to focus on reliability and stability, which has been our priority from the beginning. We plan to carefully work on existing features, adding more options to them. In the near future, we will add option for sending user defined HTTP headers with Webhook requests and we will work to support new notification channels and source providers. Also, we will focus more on advancing the user interface and experience.
NewReleases will remain the service mainly focused on the needs of developers, but some of the features that we’ve implemented and we plan to introduce in the future will be handy for project managers and team leads, as well.
We wish you all prosper next year, full of interesting new releases and creative code!