sirkitree.net //say it out loud, [sur-ki-tree]

Have you ever found yourself following development releases of Drupal modules much more closely, but never able to quite keep up with all of the modules you're following? Have you ever wished that you could get notified when something changed; a patch committed, a new feature committed, and email just isn't fast enough for you? ... do you twitter? Then I've got the solution for you!

I've found myself in this position many times, and always thought, 'Man, it'd be nice if I was notified sooner that something was changing with this module.' I've always loved Growl for my MBP, and finding Twitter (and subsequently Twirl... an Adobe Air app with a website built on Drupal ;) ) has given me that 'Ever-present knowledge' of what my friends are up to. So if there is a mechanism for letting me know what my friends are up to... why not what they're committing to Drupal.org?

It actually became very simple once I found TwitterFeed! This nice little site allows you to post RSS feeds to a twitter account that you set up. Follow that account and you're notified of anything in that RSS feed! How does this allow me to follow commit messages, you ask? Well, not every module has it's own feed of commit message (*grumbles a little*) but each user on d.o does! Just go to their user profile, click on 'Track', and then click the submenu 'Track Code'. At the bottom of this page you'll find a convenient little RSS feed icon () and WAHLAH! Throw that into Twitterfeed for the Twitter account you've created, set it to update as you see fit, and you'll be notified every time that person commits some code to d.o!

Now this method isn't perfect, as I'd much rather be getting commit messages that only pertained to certain modules (not sure that I care what quicksketch is committing to webform for example... no offense quicksketch) but it gives me a better idea of what is getting committed where, by the people who are maintaining the things that make my world go 'round.

Check it out, try it, and if you find any nuggets to improve this process, please... let me know!