We’ve all found ourselves anxiously awaiting a new module release of our favorite puppet module on the forge. It might be coming down the pipe today, next month, or who knows when, but you’re going to need it as soon as it’s released. The forge fairly recently announced an RSS feed per module. You can see this in your RSS reader, if you use one, or get email notifications with a number of services, a few of which are mentioned in that blog. I have wanted to play with If This, Then That for a while, so I decided to see if I could figure out how to get emails through it.

You’ll need an IFTTT account, at least one puppet module you want to receive alerts on, and of course an email address to receive the alert. Once you sign up for IFTTT, go to My Applets and choose New Applet. On the next page, it’s not obvious but click the +this text and it brings you to a selection page. Click on Feed, then New Feed Item. Now switch over to your target module on the forge and find the rss link. The pattern’s pretty easy, just add /rss to the module’s link.

Now click on +that and select Email, then Send me an email. If you want, adjust the contents of the email – I found the default field setup okay – and then hit Create Action. Click on the slider to the right of Receive notifications when this Applet runs and hit Finish

If you want to change anything, click the gear icon, adjust what you need and hit Save. Repeat for all the modules you want to receive notifications upon update. Here’s what an email will look like:

You can also view, update, and add additional applets using the IFTTT app for your phone or tablet. This might not be very pretty or exciting, but since I just want to get alerts without firing up an RSS reader, it’s good enough for me. Now to start updating my Puppetfile. Enjoy!