CATCHING A RELEASE

I compile various programs from source for my 'Internet Client' SBC
where I run internet-related software remotely on my other (older)
systems. The idea is that I keep the internet-related software on
it up to date while ignoring that for the other systems. But when
I'm compiling things myself (or downloading cross-distro static
binaries etc.), that means I need a way to know when new versions
are released.

Projects on GitHub which use its releases system can be watched via
an ATOM feed, eg.
https://github.com/mobile-shell/mosh/releases.atom

GNU projects also have ATOM feeds for releases if they use
"Savannah", eg.
http://savannah.gnu.org/news/atom.php?group=mailutils

I use rss2email to send me emails when these feeds have new posts
(although I'd prefer to find something that's not Python based).

Other projects like OpenWRT already have a dedicated mailing lists
for release announcements, so that's even easier:
https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-announce

Firefox (whose Linux binaries I use) has one too, but they use
Google Groups for it, which I don't want to touch, and it doesn't
filter for normal and ESR releases so ESR users like me get lots of
noise:
https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/announce

Mozilla seem to have been willfully ignoring calls for official
RSS/ATOM feeds for years, but RSSHub claims to have one:
https://rsshub.app/firefox/release/desktop

Unfortunately their feed for ESR releases isn't working anymore,
and it was unreliable in various ways before that too:
https://rsshub.app/firefox/release/organizations

It also spits out posts with all the HTML tags from the releases
page left in, which is pretty ugly.

Of course Firefox itself will tell you, repeatedly, when it has an
update available. But I don't like programs that phone home
(sharing all your system details with Mozilla at the same time) and
nag me, so I disable that by creating an
/etc/firefox/policies/policies.json file as follows:

----------------------------------
{
  "policies": {
               "DisableAppUpdate": true
              }
}
----------------------------------

Finally I've written my own shell script that checks for new
Firefox versions within the chosen release branch and if a new one
is found scrapes the release notes page for details. It can be run
by Cron to send you the output as an email, or actually I add " |
sendmail" after the multi-line echo command so the "Subject:" line
is used in the email. It displays the new version and the changes
in plain text, with a link to detail on the security
vulnerabilities. We'll see how long it lasts until they change the
page layout...

The only trouble is when two (or more) releases happen in the same
branch at the same time, you miss the first one. That's happening
now with ESR since they're supporting v128 and v115 on old Windows
and MacOS, but that won't be for much longer.

That "ffversion.sh" script is here in the scripts section for all
the nobodies who care:
gopher://aussies.space/1/~freet/scripts/

Example output (I didn't go to that much effort with the layout):
----------------------------------
$ ffversion.sh
Subject: Firefox Release 139.0beta

Firefox 139.0beta released on April 29, 2025.

Release Notes:
https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/139.0beta/releasenotes/

             New

     Full-Page Translations are now available within Firefox
extension pages.

             Fixed

     PNG images with transparency now keep their transparency when
pasted into Firefox.

     The upload performance of HTTP/3 been significantly improved,
particularly on resumed connections (QUIC 0-RTT) and high bandwidth
and high delay connections.

     Fix for MFSA 2025-36 included in Firefox 139.0b10 and newer.

             Developer

     Developer Information

             Web Platform

     window.getSelection().toString() now correctly returns the
text serialization when text is selected in a text control,
improving cross-browser interoperability on some sites.

     Closed <details> elements are now searchable and can be
automatically expanded if found via find-in-page.

     Timer throttling for Workers is now supported.

     The Temporal proposal is now enabled by default in Firefox.
Temporal is a better version of Date, for more details, please see
https://spidermonkey.dev/blog/2025/04/11/shipping-temporal.html and
https://tc39.es/proposal-temporal/docs/.

     Added support for the WebAuthn largeBlob extension.

     Added support for requestClose() to HTMLDialogElement.

     Service Workers are now available in Private Browsing Mode.
This enhancement builds on our efforts to support IndexedDB and the
DOM Cache API in Private Browsing through encrypted storage. With
this change, more websites, especially those that rely on
background tasks, will be able to benefit from Service workers.

     Firefox now supports the hidden=until-found attribute,
allowing content to be found via find-in-page when it's otherwise
hidden by default.

     The built-in editor for contenteditable and designMode now
handles collapsible white-space(s) before block boundaries and
white-space sequences between visible content more consistently
with Chrome. As a result, Gecko no longer inserts a padding
<br> element after white-space before a block boundary,
aligning behavior with other browsers.

Security Advisories:
https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2025-36/
----------------------------------

Now if only I didn't have to use such a damn slow, bloated,
over-complicated, poorly-documented, piece of software like Firefox
in the first place...

- The Free Thinker

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