What's the best way to keep track of changes to ROS stacks and packages?

edit

It depends on what OS you are on. If Ubuntu, just use debs and let the package manager handle it. If something else, running rosinstall is probably the best way to make sure you are up to date.

Subscribing to the ros-users list is also an excellent way to keep track of important changes, as they are often announced there before they happen.

There was talk of perhaps making something like a "ros-announce" list that would likely be moderated and would only handle important announcements (such as the change from setup.sh to setup.bash) so that they don't get lost in the sometimes high-traffic ros-users list.