Notifications
The bell in the top right of the Hop Gui toolbar collects notifications from the sources you configure. A dot on the bell means there is something unread; click it to open the panel.
Out of the box there is one source, Apache Hop Releases, which reports new releases of Apache Hop itself. Installed plugins can add sources of their own without any configuration: the Hop marketplace, for example, reports when a plugin you installed has a newer version available.
Sources are polled in the background, once an hour by default. Nothing is fetched while Hop Gui is starting up, so notifications never delay the moment the window opens.
| Notifications tell you that something is available; they do not act on it. There is no update or install action attached to a notification. Downloading a new Hop release, or updating a plugin through the marketplace, stays a separate step you take yourself. |
The notification panel
Each notification shows a title, a short message and how long ago it arrived. Clicking one opens its link in your browser — only http and https links are opened.
The panel has three buttons:
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Mark all read clears the dot on the bell without removing anything. Whether the notifications stay visible depends on the Show read notifications option.
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Clear all marks everything as read and removes it. Cleared notifications do not come back, even if the source still offers them.
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Settings opens the configuration described below.
When a source cannot be reached, a banner at the top of the panel names it and explains why, with a Retry button that polls every source again. One source failing never stops the others.
Configuring notifications
Open the Configuration perspective and select the Notifications tab, or click Settings in the notification panel.
The options at the top apply to every source:
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
Enable notification system | Switch notifications off entirely. Polling stops and the bell stops updating. |
Default poll interval (minutes) | How often a source is polled when it does not set its own interval. Defaults to 60. |
Default days to go back | Notifications older than this are not shown in the panel. 0 shows everything. |
Show read notifications | Whether notifications you have already read stay visible in the panel. |
Remember to click Save after changing anything.
Notification sources
The table below the options lists your sources. Use Add…, Edit… and Delete to manage them. The Color column sets the colour of the marker shown next to that source’s notifications, which is handy once you have more than a couple.
Every source has a name, a type, an enabled flag, and an optional poll interval and days-to-go-back that override the defaults above. The remaining fields depend on the type.
GitHub Releases
Reports the releases of a GitHub repository.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
GitHub URL (or owner/repo) | Paste a repository URL such as |
Owner, Repository | The repository to watch, if you would rather enter them separately. |
Include pre-releases | Whether releases the repository flags as pre-releases are reported. Off by default. |
Only versions newer than | Releases at or below this version are not reported. Leave it empty to be told about every release the repository offers, including its entire back catalogue. |
User name, Password or token | Optional, for private repositories. A GitHub personal access token also raises the rate limit. GitHub ignores the user name when a token is given. |
| Apache Hop tags every release as a release candidate ( |
The default Apache Hop Releases source is a GitHub Releases source pointing at apache/hop, with its version floor set to the Hop version you had when the source was first created.
Keeping tokens out of the configuration file
Sources are stored in your hop-config.json. Rather than typing a token into the Password or token field directly, point the field at a variable:
${GITHUB_TOKEN}The variable is resolved when the source is polled, so the secret stays out of the configuration file and a rotated token takes effect without editing the source.