FR: What differences does this fork of watchtower have?

[NiXTheDev]

As per the title, the question is:

What differences does this fork of watchtower have/provide in terms of features/fixes/other contributions, aside from continued maintainership?

This question is asked for a future reference(thus the FR label), so that others that may have the same or a similar question can be referred, or refer to this Q&A to get a general or detailed explanation of the topic, so that neither the maintainer nor collaborators or other knowledgeable people need to explain it over and over again, typing out paragraphs worth of text each time that someone asks the same or a similar question

[nicholas-fedor]

tl;dr - This version of Watchtower is logically the same as the original version; however, should provide more consistent updates, better logging and notification support, and slightly improved API functionality.

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The best source of truth regarding differences between this fork and the original version can be found via GitHub's comparison tool:
containrrr/watchtower@main...nicholas-fedor:watchtower:main

Additional sources of update information:

• Commit log: https://github.com/nicholas-fedor/watchtower/commits/main/
• Release changelogs: https://github.com/nicholas-fedor/watchtower/releases/

When I first forked the Containrrr repository, the initial changes were primarily to implement dependency updates. Then, I addressed ongoing maintenance issues, such as resolving existing TODO items, standardizing code quality issues (linting, comments, styling, etc), updating testing, and streamlining the release process.
Currently, issues identified via either my own personal usage, submissions to the original repository, and/or submissions to this or other forks are utilized to trigger fixes or improvements.

(As of v1.9.2)

• Improved handling of static MAC addresses and network configurations based on utilizing features introduced in more recent versions of the Docker engine.
• Added support for specifying image tags via the API, enabling precise updates or downgrades. (Contributed by @Foxite.)
• Added the option to specify the HTTP API port.
• Updated support for container registries, such as GHCR, when doing HEAD requests for image manifests.
• Improved handling of container dependencies ensuring containers update in the correct order.
• Standardized and improved debug logging and error handling to provide improved visibility.
• Improved notification template with additional fields and debug logging for better monitoring.
• Switched to nicholas-fedor/shoutrrr for notifications, with updated support for Microsoft Teams, Discord threads, and Lark.

Upcoming in v1.9.3

• Improved support for Podman via addition of disable-memory-swappiness flag/variable.

That should cover the vast majority of the noteworthy changes.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask.

[NiXTheDev]

Thank you for the answer, Nick, it is genuinely great to see maintainers such as yourself engage with community
While this answer does provide current and one future version worth of updates, I'd like to- I see that the changelogs are quite detailed, for which I thank you, so I hope that anyone who wonders the same as I have can follow the changelogs throughout the releases, and perhaps catch up on what wasn't mentioned here... say half a year-full year on later(if any version, say 1.9.5, or dare i say 1.10.x releases in that time frame), but if you'd also feel like it you could also edit the answer to include the latest update, that is only a suggestion, i understand that being an OSS maintainer is quite a hurdle to manage

Again, thank you for the response and I wish you the best

[nicholas-fedor]

Closing this discussion as it's old and inactive.