13 ms·

Emacs 27.2

245 points by lelf 6y ago

sigmonsays 6y ago
what is the release cadence of emacs?
- nathell 6y ago
  I think there isn't an official one, but since 2016 there's been a major version released approximately every two years, and a minor version every couple of months. https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/history.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/history.html
  - unixhero 6y ago
    That's pretty solid!
- ddavis 6y ago
  While a set-in-stone release schedule doesn't exist, there is _a lot_ of development activity (emacs-devel is a very busy mailing list). 99.9% of the time it's safe to use the bleeding edge head of the repository if you want to use the latest stuff.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    except in the few months following a major release (at least for me)
kragen 6y ago
https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/blob/master/etc/NEWS.27 https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/blob/master/etc/NEWS.2... says, "This is a bug-fix release with no new features." But I don't understand what the bugs were.
- nicklecompte 6y ago
  Check the Changelog for that: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/master/ChangeLog.3 https://raw.githubusercontent.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/master/...
  - kragen 6y ago
    Thanks!
- b5n 6y ago
  From the OP: > For the complete list of changes and the people who made them, see the various ChangeLog files in the source distribution.
rataata_jr 6y ago
Anyone running the jit Emacs? Can't wait for it. I did try compiling it from source for my linux setup. Would love to see it on windows.
- prussian 6y ago
  I am. I honestly don't notice much of a difference, but at the same time I keep seeing deferred compilation warnings for plugins I have added via straight.el I've been using https://github.com/flatwhatson/guix-channel https://github.com/flatwhatson/guix-channel to manage it. I don't recommend trying the Pure GTK+ stuff yet though; some context menus don't seem to work. Specifically, treemacs rename seems broken with PGTK.
- TacticalCoder 6y ago
  > Anyone running the jit Emacs? I'm running the "native-comp" (libgccjit) branch daily since months and months now: not a single problem here and I've got quite a "heavy" config (thousands of lines of custom config and all the usual suspects: magit / org-mode / lsp / cider etc.). > I did try compiling it from source for my linux setup. And it worked? Worked on the first try for me (on the Debian distro). I was somehow expecting lots of problems (because it's one heck of a change) but it really all just compiled and worked perfectly fine.
  - rataata_jr 6y ago
    I followed this tutorial from mastering emacs blog iirc. I built it inside docker. I think it worked on the first try for me as well. I didn't use it much since it was in docker.
  - voodoologic 6y ago
    I found an easy installer for native-comp (for mac os). https://github.com/d12frosted/homebrew-emacs-plus https://github.com/d12frosted/homebrew-emacs-plus I'm new to emacs and so I am unaware how much faster it is or isn't.
- hypersoar 6y ago
  I've been using it for a few months on wsl and it's been great. I'm using the Nix package and have run into only a couple of minor issues.
Decabytes 6y ago
I've used Emacs for almost 5 years now and it has served me well. In the beginning it was frustrating and confusing, but now that I understand it, it's the way I naturally interact with code on my computer. The fact that so many gnu tools have movement similar to Emacs means that I can quickly become more effective in them. The fact that my work Macbook allows me to do some rudimentary movement with C-a, C-e, C-f, C-n brings me joy. Emacs rewards me for learning it better, and when I think about what it does, and is capable of doing, I'm just in awe. I highly recommend reading Mastering Emacs if you would like to become a more effective Emacs user. After using it for years I can say my single biggest gripe with Emacs is its performance. Elisp is powerful but slow, and has many warts. The developments with GccEmacs excites me, and there is still GuileMacs. As a more experienced user Emacs frustrates me because at times I demand too much of it. And when that happens, I try to temper that frustration with the understanding that the program is 36 years and 5 days old to the day, and has outlived many other pieces of software. Computers looked different in 85 than they did today, and the fact that I have saved truly days of programming time due how effective it makes me cannot be overlooked. I want Emacs to continue to improve. I want it to get even better than it already is, but I am so grateful for the people who have made it what it is today.
- tharne 6y ago
  I prefer vim as an editor, but in terms of being a unique and fascinating piece of software, emacs wins hands down. There's something really cool about the fact that you can't easily answer the question, "What is emacs similar to?", because it's such a total sui generis.
  - prewett 6y ago
    Viper mode could give you the best of both worlds, depending on what you like about vim. If it's the key navigation, viper has you covered.
    - NyxWulf 6y ago
      spacemacs has a very complete vim layer. By far it's the most complete implementation outside of actual vim I've seen.
wyuenho 6y ago
and... flickering is back on the NS port.
- abzug 6y ago
  Alan Third (the NS maintainer) said on reddit that "It's too big and invasive a change for Emacs 27."[1] [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/mc82yk/flickering_emacs_on_macos/gs5gkad/ https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/mc82yk/flickering_em...
  - wyuenho 6y ago
    Too bad. I wish they could just stop breaking things.
    - abzug 6y ago
      It's fixed on HEAD if you don't care about running from trunk. Otherwise, I suggest you to use Mitsuharu Yamamoto's Mac Port: https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac
ilovecaching 6y ago
Not to start a holy war, but what are the advantages of emacs over vim these days? I'm considering switching to emacs just to have learned both.
- znpy 6y ago
  The scripting language isn't total crap, for starters. There's a huge amount of tools (package) that enable additional features. It's easy to interface with other stuff.
- selectnull 6y ago
  I can so recommend this. I've switched to emacs few years ago for the same reason and spent about a year using it. Although I've switched back to vim afterwards, having spent time with emacs was fun and not a waste of time. Have a leap of faith, find the advantages of one (or the other) for yourself. If you don't like at any time for any reason just switch back: after all, it all text files you're editing.
- ducharmdev 6y ago
  You can have the best of both worlds using spacemacs in evil mode. Essentially gives you emacs with a lot of community-selected plugins, but with vim keybindings. As a vim user, there's just certain tools emacs provides to which there's no vim equivalent (or the vim implementation is lacking). Like org mode for example: I've yet to come across something outside of the emacs ecosystem that does a good job of replicating org mode. Maybe jupyter notebooks come close in some ways, but AFAIK the org mode experience is fairly unique to emacs.
- elpatoisthebest 6y ago
  Take my answer with a grain of salt because I have much more experience with vim and I have used emacs only off and on for a couple years, and I only use it as an "IDE" of sorts. So, how I experience them, they aren't exactly competitors in a direct sense. When I use vim in the terminal, I treat my workflow in a particular way. I use tmux to have windows for multiple projects (usually I run 2 or more microservices in my day to day). I use TUIs like lazygit, and I rely heavily on command line tools to build, compile, and do most of the daily things. I am familiar with those and it's basically like the whole terminal is my IDE in some ways. For note taking and idea management, I use vimwiki within vim. Using Emacs is different for everyone's specific use cases, but the way I have tried to use it as an IDE for golang, node, and some react. Emacs seems to prefer integrating your workflow INTO emacs rather than just having emacs be a single part of your workflow. (I'm simplifying too much, I think) Evil mode gives me literally every single vim command I ever have used in my entire life. I am a heavy vim user, but I am not an extreme power user. I use macros, regex, and other simple vim stuff. All of it is perfectly fine in evil mode as I use it. But feature parity isn't a great reason to switch from vim IMO. -The first thing that really is a huge improvement is org mode to capture anything in the code I am looking at that I don't have time to address. Like capturing a weird piece of code or something that might have a bug state, org capture, make a note of it and I can come right back to it later when I have free time. - Everyone touts magit. I love magit, BUT if I'm being honest with myself, lazygit is nearly just as good...and if you've been using git commands fine for any amount of time, it's more of a nicety than a MUST have. I don't view magit as "the killer app" that other do, but I admit that I really like it and use it heavily whenever I use emacs. - Elisp is amazing compared to vimscript. That's pretty much that whole bullet point. There are more things, but it might depend on your personal workflow and the kind of work you do. I recommend dipping your toes in using DOOM emacs (or spacemacs, but I didn't like that one as much) and getting a feel for emacs. You might find that you like it, you might find that you prefer your current vim & terminal based workflow better. I'm somewhere between the worlds. I really keep coming back to emacs because of 1) Org mode 2) Csv mode (Sounds silly, but I do a LOT of csv parsing in my life) 3) elisp hacking & scratch mode.
hamburga 6y ago
In case you're eager to upgrade (I never am, that's the point with Emacs![1]) here's the description of the changes: "Emacs 27.2 is a bug-fix release, with no new features with respect toEmacs 27.1." [1] Excellent Steve Yegge post describing how much Emacs cares about stability and backwards-compatibility: https://steve-yegge.medium.com/dear-google-cloud-your-deprecation-policy-is-killing-you-ee7525dc05dc https://steve-yegge.medium.com/dear-google-cloud-your-deprec...
brightball 6y ago
I tried Emacs after reading so much about it lately...but I don’t understand how people use it. The sheer volume of key combinations always in play to do things makes my hands hurt. It made me see the appeal of some of those concave keyboards.
- widdershins 6y ago
  I'm just getting into Emacs (~4 months) and I'd say that I have probably ~40 key-commands memorized. I M-x search for everything else and I still find it to be an excellent experience. I'm building my config and muscle memory very slowly, but enjoying every minute.
- DocTomoe 6y ago
  That's me, two years ago, when I made the switch from vi. In the end, the key combinations are something to learn - but the productivity increase makes them worth learning. And for the handcramp thing: Realize that you have two control, and two meta keys on a standard keyboard.
- neolog 6y ago
  Many people find it helpful to swap ctrl with capslock.
  - samus 6y ago
    I'm currently trying out a circular swap of left ctrl -> left super, left super -> left alt, left alt -> left ctrl. The goal is the same: now the thumb just curls a little bit more to reach ctrl. Edit: my preferred keyboard layout has levels, and the Caps Lock key is a level shifter, which makes me prefer not pushing it down to Left Ctrl.
- auganov 6y ago
  Super and Hyper (Right Alt and Right Pritnscreen for me). I never use any C-c bindings. C-* & M-* already have decent defaults, so all my frequently used stuff is s-* and H-*. Some of the less frequent stuff might be H-s-*, C-s-* or M-s-* [0]. Everything else I can just call from M-x. Don't see the point of using keybindings for stuff you only need a few times a day. On the flipside the stuff where keybindings make sense should have the simplest possible one. [0] It may seem daunting but there's usually some symmetry in the way I define them. One letter tends to do different but somewhat related things with different modifiers. For example s-x is eval defun, H-x is eval s-exp at point, s-z is eval defun and pprint, H-x is eval at point and pprint. H-s-x is eval at point and replace. C-k is kill-line so s-k is kill sexp. M-f is forward-word so s-f is forward-sexp.
in9 6y ago
as a vim user, how could I learn Emacs? I know of Evil mode, but how easy is it to have some stuff just like I have in vim (such as custom text objects, vim-surround, etc..).
- acoard 6y ago
  Look at Doom Emacs. It's pre-configured to work out of the box for modern dev. There are also some good guides on YouTube by DistroTube, if you prefer to learn that way. https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr_iBj91eeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr_iBj91eeI
wiswindsurf 6y ago
I started using emacs in the early 1980s. Just found out I could use it on my cell phone. Never thought I would be using it on a phone I can carry around. I just have to carry a magnifying glass to see the text with my aging eyes...
magwa101 6y ago
I started on an emacs inspired editor Epsilon in the late 80s. It allowed for multitasking and I could do compiles in one window whilst editing in the other. It was a total game changer for DOS development. I had forgotten about it, but they're still going strong! When I switched to Unix I switched to emacs. I'm on Visual Studio Code now and load up the "emacs" plugins. Over the years I've seen so many emacs features get reimplemented elsewhere, my favorite being file/variable/name/etc. auto expansion/suggestion.

Emacs 27.2

245 points by lelf 6y ago

sigmonsays 6y ago

what is the release cadence of emacs?

nathell 6y ago
I think there isn't an official one, but since 2016 there's been a major version released approximately every two years, and a minor version every couple of months. https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/history.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/history.html
- unixhero 6y ago
  That's pretty solid!
ddavis 6y ago
While a set-in-stone release schedule doesn't exist, there is _a lot_ of development activity (emacs-devel is a very busy mailing list). 99.9% of the time it's safe to use the bleeding edge head of the repository if you want to use the latest stuff.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  except in the few months following a major release (at least for me)

kragen 6y ago

https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/blob/master/etc/NEWS.27 https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/blob/master/etc/NEWS.2... says, "This is a bug-fix release with no new features." But I don't understand what the bugs were.

nicklecompte 6y ago
Check the Changelog for that: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/master/ChangeLog.3 https://raw.githubusercontent.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/master/...
- kragen 6y ago
  Thanks!
b5n 6y ago
From the OP: > For the complete list of changes and the people who made them, see the various ChangeLog files in the source distribution.

rataata_jr 6y ago

Anyone running the jit Emacs? Can't wait for it. I did try compiling it from source for my linux setup. Would love to see it on windows.

prussian 6y ago
I am. I honestly don't notice much of a difference, but at the same time I keep seeing deferred compilation warnings for plugins I have added via straight.el I've been using https://github.com/flatwhatson/guix-channel https://github.com/flatwhatson/guix-channel to manage it. I don't recommend trying the Pure GTK+ stuff yet though; some context menus don't seem to work. Specifically, treemacs rename seems broken with PGTK.
TacticalCoder 6y ago
> Anyone running the jit Emacs? I'm running the "native-comp" (libgccjit) branch daily since months and months now: not a single problem here and I've got quite a "heavy" config (thousands of lines of custom config and all the usual suspects: magit / org-mode / lsp / cider etc.). > I did try compiling it from source for my linux setup. And it worked? Worked on the first try for me (on the Debian distro). I was somehow expecting lots of problems (because it's one heck of a change) but it really all just compiled and worked perfectly fine.
- rataata_jr 6y ago
  I followed this tutorial from mastering emacs blog iirc. I built it inside docker. I think it worked on the first try for me as well. I didn't use it much since it was in docker.
- voodoologic 6y ago
  I found an easy installer for native-comp (for mac os). https://github.com/d12frosted/homebrew-emacs-plus https://github.com/d12frosted/homebrew-emacs-plus I'm new to emacs and so I am unaware how much faster it is or isn't.
hypersoar 6y ago
I've been using it for a few months on wsl and it's been great. I'm using the Nix package and have run into only a couple of minor issues.

Decabytes 6y ago

I've used Emacs for almost 5 years now and it has served me well. In the beginning it was frustrating and confusing, but now that I understand it, it's the way I naturally interact with code on my computer. The fact that so many gnu tools have movement similar to Emacs means that I can quickly become more effective in them. The fact that my work Macbook allows me to do some rudimentary movement with C-a, C-e, C-f, C-n brings me joy. Emacs rewards me for learning it better, and when I think about what it does, and is capable of doing, I'm just in awe. I highly recommend reading Mastering Emacs if you would like to become a more effective Emacs user. After using it for years I can say my single biggest gripe with Emacs is its performance. Elisp is powerful but slow, and has many warts. The developments with GccEmacs excites me, and there is still GuileMacs. As a more experienced user Emacs frustrates me because at times I demand too much of it. And when that happens, I try to temper that frustration with the understanding that the program is 36 years and 5 days old to the day, and has outlived many other pieces of software. Computers looked different in 85 than they did today, and the fact that I have saved truly days of programming time due how effective it makes me cannot be overlooked. I want Emacs to continue to improve. I want it to get even better than it already is, but I am so grateful for the people who have made it what it is today.

tharne 6y ago
I prefer vim as an editor, but in terms of being a unique and fascinating piece of software, emacs wins hands down. There's something really cool about the fact that you can't easily answer the question, "What is emacs similar to?", because it's such a total sui generis.
- prewett 6y ago
  Viper mode could give you the best of both worlds, depending on what you like about vim. If it's the key navigation, viper has you covered.
  - NyxWulf 6y ago
    spacemacs has a very complete vim layer. By far it's the most complete implementation outside of actual vim I've seen.

wyuenho 6y ago

and... flickering is back on the NS port.

abzug 6y ago
Alan Third (the NS maintainer) said on reddit that "It's too big and invasive a change for Emacs 27."[1] [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/mc82yk/flickering_emacs_on_macos/gs5gkad/ https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/mc82yk/flickering_em...
- wyuenho 6y ago
  Too bad. I wish they could just stop breaking things.
  - abzug 6y ago
    It's fixed on HEAD if you don't care about running from trunk. Otherwise, I suggest you to use Mitsuharu Yamamoto's Mac Port: https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac

ilovecaching 6y ago

Not to start a holy war, but what are the advantages of emacs over vim these days? I'm considering switching to emacs just to have learned both.

znpy 6y ago
The scripting language isn't total crap, for starters. There's a huge amount of tools (package) that enable additional features. It's easy to interface with other stuff.
selectnull 6y ago
I can so recommend this. I've switched to emacs few years ago for the same reason and spent about a year using it. Although I've switched back to vim afterwards, having spent time with emacs was fun and not a waste of time. Have a leap of faith, find the advantages of one (or the other) for yourself. If you don't like at any time for any reason just switch back: after all, it all text files you're editing.
ducharmdev 6y ago
You can have the best of both worlds using spacemacs in evil mode. Essentially gives you emacs with a lot of community-selected plugins, but with vim keybindings. As a vim user, there's just certain tools emacs provides to which there's no vim equivalent (or the vim implementation is lacking). Like org mode for example: I've yet to come across something outside of the emacs ecosystem that does a good job of replicating org mode. Maybe jupyter notebooks come close in some ways, but AFAIK the org mode experience is fairly unique to emacs.
elpatoisthebest 6y ago
Take my answer with a grain of salt because I have much more experience with vim and I have used emacs only off and on for a couple years, and I only use it as an "IDE" of sorts. So, how I experience them, they aren't exactly competitors in a direct sense. When I use vim in the terminal, I treat my workflow in a particular way. I use tmux to have windows for multiple projects (usually I run 2 or more microservices in my day to day). I use TUIs like lazygit, and I rely heavily on command line tools to build, compile, and do most of the daily things. I am familiar with those and it's basically like the whole terminal is my IDE in some ways. For note taking and idea management, I use vimwiki within vim. Using Emacs is different for everyone's specific use cases, but the way I have tried to use it as an IDE for golang, node, and some react. Emacs seems to prefer integrating your workflow INTO emacs rather than just having emacs be a single part of your workflow. (I'm simplifying too much, I think) Evil mode gives me literally every single vim command I ever have used in my entire life. I am a heavy vim user, but I am not an extreme power user. I use macros, regex, and other simple vim stuff. All of it is perfectly fine in evil mode as I use it. But feature parity isn't a great reason to switch from vim IMO. -The first thing that really is a huge improvement is org mode to capture anything in the code I am looking at that I don't have time to address. Like capturing a weird piece of code or something that might have a bug state, org capture, make a note of it and I can come right back to it later when I have free time. - Everyone touts magit. I love magit, BUT if I'm being honest with myself, lazygit is nearly just as good...and if you've been using git commands fine for any amount of time, it's more of a nicety than a MUST have. I don't view magit as "the killer app" that other do, but I admit that I really like it and use it heavily whenever I use emacs. - Elisp is amazing compared to vimscript. That's pretty much that whole bullet point. There are more things, but it might depend on your personal workflow and the kind of work you do. I recommend dipping your toes in using DOOM emacs (or spacemacs, but I didn't like that one as much) and getting a feel for emacs. You might find that you like it, you might find that you prefer your current vim & terminal based workflow better. I'm somewhere between the worlds. I really keep coming back to emacs because of 1) Org mode 2) Csv mode (Sounds silly, but I do a LOT of csv parsing in my life) 3) elisp hacking & scratch mode.

hamburga 6y ago

In case you're eager to upgrade (I never am, that's the point with Emacs![1]) here's the description of the changes: "Emacs 27.2 is a bug-fix release, with no new features with respect toEmacs 27.1." [1] Excellent Steve Yegge post describing how much Emacs cares about stability and backwards-compatibility: https://steve-yegge.medium.com/dear-google-cloud-your-deprecation-policy-is-killing-you-ee7525dc05dc https://steve-yegge.medium.com/dear-google-cloud-your-deprec...

brightball 6y ago

I tried Emacs after reading so much about it lately...but I don’t understand how people use it. The sheer volume of key combinations always in play to do things makes my hands hurt. It made me see the appeal of some of those concave keyboards.

widdershins 6y ago
I'm just getting into Emacs (~4 months) and I'd say that I have probably ~40 key-commands memorized. I M-x search for everything else and I still find it to be an excellent experience. I'm building my config and muscle memory very slowly, but enjoying every minute.
DocTomoe 6y ago
That's me, two years ago, when I made the switch from vi. In the end, the key combinations are something to learn - but the productivity increase makes them worth learning. And for the handcramp thing: Realize that you have two control, and two meta keys on a standard keyboard.
neolog 6y ago
Many people find it helpful to swap ctrl with capslock.
- samus 6y ago
  I'm currently trying out a circular swap of left ctrl -> left super, left super -> left alt, left alt -> left ctrl. The goal is the same: now the thumb just curls a little bit more to reach ctrl. Edit: my preferred keyboard layout has levels, and the Caps Lock key is a level shifter, which makes me prefer not pushing it down to Left Ctrl.
auganov 6y ago
Super and Hyper (Right Alt and Right Pritnscreen for me). I never use any C-c bindings. C-* & M-* already have decent defaults, so all my frequently used stuff is s-* and H-*. Some of the less frequent stuff might be H-s-*, C-s-* or M-s-* [0]. Everything else I can just call from M-x. Don't see the point of using keybindings for stuff you only need a few times a day. On the flipside the stuff where keybindings make sense should have the simplest possible one. [0] It may seem daunting but there's usually some symmetry in the way I define them. One letter tends to do different but somewhat related things with different modifiers. For example s-x is eval defun, H-x is eval s-exp at point, s-z is eval defun and pprint, H-x is eval at point and pprint. H-s-x is eval at point and replace. C-k is kill-line so s-k is kill sexp. M-f is forward-word so s-f is forward-sexp.

in9 6y ago

as a vim user, how could I learn Emacs? I know of Evil mode, but how easy is it to have some stuff just like I have in vim (such as custom text objects, vim-surround, etc..).

acoard 6y ago
Look at Doom Emacs. It's pre-configured to work out of the box for modern dev. There are also some good guides on YouTube by DistroTube, if you prefer to learn that way. https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr_iBj91eeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr_iBj91eeI

wiswindsurf 6y ago

I started using emacs in the early 1980s. Just found out I could use it on my cell phone. Never thought I would be using it on a phone I can carry around. I just have to carry a magnifying glass to see the text with my aging eyes...

magwa101 6y ago

I started on an emacs inspired editor Epsilon in the late 80s. It allowed for multitasking and I could do compiles in one window whilst editing in the other. It was a total game changer for DOS development. I had forgotten about it, but they're still going strong! When I switched to Unix I switched to emacs. I'm on Visual Studio Code now and load up the "emacs" plugins. Over the years I've seen so many emacs features get reimplemented elsewhere, my favorite being file/variable/name/etc. auto expansion/suggestion.