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I think the situation is different for Mercurial. Since every hg client has to be able to inter-operate with any hg client from any other machine, regardless of

I think the situation is different for Mercurial. Since every hg client has to be able to inter-operate with any hg client from any other machine, regardless of whether it's been updated or not, it makes sense to retain old functionality, so that newer clients can still talk to older ones. I believe rsync also does a similar thing, where it has some kind of system to figure out the highest version of the rsync protocol supported by both sides, and newer rsync versions support all the old versions of the protocol. Emacs is not in this position. Multiple versions of Emacs can always inter-operate as long as they can all read and write text files.

ArneBab 11y ago
You will have multiple Emacs versions on your devices — all using the same .emacs.d with only minor patches. And your friends will use your adaptions, too. Emacs isn’t just a text editor. It is an environment for elisp programming.
kazinator 11y ago
Two things: I suspect that not every feature of the client has to do with protocol or repo format interoperability. Secondly, things can change in that regard, too. Secondly, formats and protocols can be subject to versioning and obsolescence also. In short, the situation is not different. > Multiple versions of Emacs can always inter-operate as long as they can all read and write text files. What? No; Emacs is a language implementation, changes in which can easily break old code. Sure it can read some elisp file you wrote in 1991, but will it work?