1. if there's a project mailing list (or mailing lists) I subscribe to the list(s) as appropriate. Most of the projects I'm interested in do have a mailing list of some sort.
2. If the project has an IRC channel on Freenode, I will often lurk in the IRC channel. I have my client set to auto-join all the channels I'm interested in.
3. If there's a blog aggregator ("Planet") for the project, I follow it's feed, and/or visit the webpage periodically. ex: http://www.planetscala.com/
4. If the project is on GitHub, I just "watch" it on github.
Comments
I'd say there are four major things I do:
1. if there's a project mailing list (or mailing lists) I subscribe to the list(s) as appropriate. Most of the projects I'm interested in do have a mailing list of some sort.
2. If the project has an IRC channel on Freenode, I will often lurk in the IRC channel. I have my client set to auto-join all the channels I'm interested in.
3. If there's a blog aggregator ("Planet") for the project, I follow it's feed, and/or visit the webpage periodically. ex: http://www.planetscala.com/
4. If the project is on GitHub, I just "watch" it on github.