10 ms·

GNU Emacs 24.1 released

325 points by alexott 14y ago

gcv 14y ago
There's a slightly annoying regression (to Emacs 22, behavior, I believe) in the Mac version. Some Unicode characters (like —, “, and ”) cause the line to expand in height slightly. Does anyone know of a fix?
- drothlis 14y ago
  If you modify the default font, you also have to change the default "fontset", because merely changing the default font doesn't install it as the font for unicode characters. I use: (set-face-attribute 'default nil :family "Menlo" :height 120) (set-fontset-font "fontset-default" 'unicode "Menlo")
  - gcv 14y ago
    Perfect. Thank you so much. Guess I don't know as much about Emacs as I thought. :)
Xyzodiac 14y ago
So does that mean it's officially stable? This is great news.
- ConstantineXVI 14y ago
  Yep. The current stable release is 24.1.[0] [0] http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
  - Xyzodiac 14y ago
    Fantastic, thanks :)
carterschonwald 14y ago
Woah, emacs lisp now has lexical scoping
- intranation 14y ago
  It's opt-in, otherwise most packages would break. To enable it per-file use a file-local variable: ;;; -*- lexical-binding: t -*-
  - perlgeek 14y ago
    How ironic. Wouldn't it make much sense to enable it per lexical scope? Or as Perl did it (18 years ago) with a new keyword, so that you can use both dynamic and lexical variables in the same file? Best of both worlds.
    - m00natic 14y ago
      Well, there has been lexical-let in the cl package for quite a while.
    - onedognight 14y ago
      You can use both in the same file; you just need to declare the dynamic ones using defvar, etc. If you turn lexical-binding on blindly, the compiler will usually tell you which variables you need to mark as dynamic.
    - unhammer 14y ago
      (eval form t) enables lexical scoping for form. http://yoo2080.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/lexical-scoping-and-dynamic-scoping-in-emacs-lisp/ http://yoo2080.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/lexical-scoping-and-... is highly recommended reading btw.
    - rcthompson 14y ago
      It has to be this way to remain backward-compatible. Similar to the issues Perl is going through with things like enabling strict by default (you have to request at least a certain version, I think 5.12), and distinguishing a Perl 6 file from Perl 5 one.
Garbage 14y ago
New features: - New packaging system and interface (M-x list-packages) for downloading and installing extensions. A default package archive is hosted by GNU and maintained by the Emacs developers. - Support for displaying and editing bidirectional text, including right-to-left scripts such as Arabic and Hebrew. - Support for lexical scoping in Emacs Lisp. - Improvements to the Custom Themes system (M-x customize-themes). - Unified and improved completion system in many modes and packages. - Support for GnuTLS (for built-in TLS/SSL encryption), GTK+ 3, ImageMagick, SELinux, and Libxml2. This looks great. :)
- ruediger 14y ago
  Complete list http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/NEWS.24.1 http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/NEWS.24.1
  - Aethaeryn 14y ago
    You can also find out about the important changes from: C-h r m antinews RET This provides a changelog in the opposite direction, which is entertaining: For those users who live backwards in time, here is information about downgrading to Emacs version 23.4. We hope you will enjoy the greater simplicity that results from the absence of many Emacs 24.1 features. ----- It can be found online here: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Antinews.html http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Ant...
kcbanner 14y ago
Great news!
Deutscher 14y ago
Does anyone know if/when it will be available via Ubuntu Software Center or some PPA? I am on Ubuntu 12.04.
- ruediger 14y ago
  There is a PPA for the snapshot https://launchpad.net/~cassou/+archive/emacs https://launchpad.net/~cassou/+archive/emacs http://emacs.naquadah.org/ http://emacs.naquadah.org/ (Debian)
drstrangevibes 14y ago
oh frabjous day!
- sliceof314 14y ago
  Callooh! Callay!
munchor 14y ago
Awesome release! I've been waiting for this for a long time now. It will be in Arch Linux's repositories in a few hours. The package system is awesome, no more hassle installing plugins and extensions! Great job GNU, thank you!
mih 14y ago
Any idea when the precompiled Windows version will be released? Currently there seems to be no build http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/ http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/
- alexott 14y ago
  usually it takes not so much time (2-3 days) to release windows version
- mdaniel 14y ago
  This might not be appropriate for your situation, but I have found it surprisingly easy to build emacs from git by using MinGW/MSYS. If you need the exact command line, send me email or reply here and I'll post it when I get back to the office on Monday. The only non-trivial steps I had to take were to track down the "dev" msys packages for jpeg, png and xpm libraries. I do not link my nightly builds against gnutls, just to set expectations [my experience with non-native security stuff on windows leads me to avoid that headache; YMMV].
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- barik 14y ago
  For what it's worth, the Windows binaries are now available: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-24.1-bin-i386.zip http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-24.1-bin-i386.zip
RShackleford 14y ago
i HATE emacs.
barik 14y ago
This means that I can finally try out Emacs Prelude [1]. Fantastic! I've been wanting to check it out for a while, but I haven't been brave enough to run a non-stable release of GNU Emacs. http://batsov.com/prelude/ http://batsov.com/prelude/
- eschulte 14y ago
  Same for the Literate Emacs24 Starter Kit (shameless plug by the maintainer). https://github.com/eschulte/emacs24-starter-kit https://github.com/eschulte/emacs24-starter-kit
  - stephenlee 14y ago
    Wow, great job. Thanks!
- rcthompson 14y ago
  Non-stable is a relative term. Emacs daily development snapshots are more stable than the stable releases of most other software.
  - Ixiaus 14y ago
    I can vouch for this, I've been running on daily for the last 2 years and have rarely encountered a game stopping issue.
- metaguri 14y ago
  What functionality does prelude provide? Unless I'm missing something, the website suggests that you can find out by "reading the source." I had a similar experience once with the emacs starter kit [1]. Though it's a noble effort and probably does have a ton of great features, there are some problems: you pretty much get all or nothing (ESK split it out into a "core" and "per-language" set of libraries but still, there's a lot of stuff) and it's hard to tell which things are emacs builtin and what is customizable. If you disagree with a customization you're SOL; I knew enough about emacs to know that some things had been customized, and I didn't like them, but it was nigh impossible to find out where they were customized and how to turn them off. It reminds me of the libraries vs frameworks discussion [2]. Emacs works well with libraries (with little elisp functions counting as "mini-libraries"), and the ESK/prelude seem like frameworks. I'm not trying to pick on these toolkits in particular. They are probably a good way to start out with emacs--I know that the ESK provides a bunch of features to make it more "friendly" out of the box for someone who is coming from something like TextMate. Most "old-school" emacs people I know have their own .emacs that have accumulated over years and years of trying to solve specific problems or customize that one thing that's annoyed the crap out of them for a while. My .emacs is not pages and pages, but it does have some good stuff in it. What I'd love to see (and maybe I'm inviting myself to do this) would be a tool (maybe ELPA is this tool, though It's hard to know) which allows you to search for, browse, and install elisp snippets to help you out. ELPA is good for bigger libraries (i.e. major modes) but not for "how do I create an unfill-paragraph function?" [1] https://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit https://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2762280 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2762280
alexott 14y ago
At the end of http://wikemacs.org/wiki/GNU_Emacs_24 http://wikemacs.org/wiki/GNU_Emacs_24 page, there are links to posts that describe changes in new version
st3fan 14y ago
So what is your favorite new feature?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- chc 14y ago
  Having ELPA built in is really nice. If I'd had a package manager back when I was first learning Emacs, I think I would have resented it a lot less. And even now, having it available without fiddling with anything will be such a nicety.
- unhammer 14y ago
  I'm looking forward to trying ELPA (my .emacs.d is so full of stuff I've not yet gotten around to trying it). bi-di support is also really nice, I've been copypasting into other programs until now. Also always nice to get a new org-mode version (though I'm never quite sure whether using org makes me more productive, or whether playing with new org features makes me procrastinate more). Favourite feature that makes you go O_o : "`nato-region' converts text to NATO phonetic alphabet."
fungo 14y ago
wait for long time, really great!
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
onedognight 14y ago
Precompiled binaries for Emacs 24.1 are already available for OS X at http://emacsformacosx.com/ http://emacsformacosx.com/ .
- __david__ 14y ago
  You caught that quick! It only finished compiling a few minutes ago... (I generally kick off the release builds manually)
  - gnufied 14y ago
    Last I checked your builds didn't had `ns-toggle-fullscreen`. Is that still the case? EDIT: Looks like emacsforosx does not compile Emacs with support for above command. Will you consider it? I totally understand distributing plain vanilla version though!
    - mwyvern 14y ago
      Homebrew includes that patch, and the recipe has been updated for emacs 24. brew update # Lion only (or if you don't have xcode?) brew tap homebrew/dupes brew install apple-gcc42 # put these in your .bashrc export HOMEBREW_USE_GCC=1 export HOMEBREW_VERBOSE=1 # /Lion only brew install emacs --cocoa brew linkapps
    - __david__ 14y ago
      No, I don't want to support a bunch of little patches on top of emacs. But it's frustrating for me, too, because I want the feature as much as anyone else. I've been making do with "(setq ns-auto-hide-menu-bar t)" which is close to the desired behavior, especially when combined with maxframe [1]. It still has the window's title bar, so it's not exactly there. [1] https://github.com/rmm5t/maxframe.el https://github.com/rmm5t/maxframe.el I use it like this (where super is the command key): (defun toggle-frame-maximization () (interactive) (if (frame-parameter nil 'mf-maximized) (restore-frame) (maximize-frame))) (define-key global-map [(super return)] 'toggle-frame-maximization)
  - 14y ago
vamega 14y ago
I've been using the pretests for a while now, and the built in package manager has been an absolute joy to work with. If I were to begin writing extensions, I'd also probably enjoy the lexical scoping a lot more.
aashu_dwivedi 14y ago
the only time i hate the packaging system [apt] is when a new version of some software is released
- technomancy 14y ago
  It should be in nix shortly: http://nixos.org/nix http://nixos.org/nix Nix and apt are very complementary to each other; apt has all the stable never-breaks stuff, and nix has all the latest new code. And when you pull in something too new that breaks, you can roll it back trivially.
jmount 14y ago
OSX build seems to work really well: ./configure --with-gif=no --with-ns make make install
- rickhutcheson 14y ago
  Note to anyone attempting to build this on OS X: If you're getting strange errors when running make, ensure that you don't have the Mono framework installed as well. If you do, move it out of the way ( from /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework to some other directory) before you try to install. After the install, move it back.
- throwdown 14y ago
  I'm getting this: checking host system type... i386-apple-darwin11.3.0 configure: error: Emacs hasn't been ported to `i386-apple-darwin11.3.0' systems. Check `etc/MACHINES' for recognized configuration names.
- jmount 14y ago
  Ouch, sorry others are having trouble. Mine happened to work- but I don't know a lot about controlling the build config. And the formatting didn't survive pasting. Should have been: ./configure --with-gif=no --with-ns; make; make install
  - throwdown 14y ago
    I built it from the sources in the emacs-24 branch without a problem. For some reason only the tarball sources threw up that config error. Strange.
- pnathan 14y ago
  As a note; ./configure --with-ns; make; make install, then copy to Applications.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
cbp 14y ago
Someday there will be a version where the new feature will be an actually useful wiki :p
- neic 14y ago
  There is a “next generation, better structured and improved wiki” at http://wikemacs.org/ http://wikemacs.org/
jmount 14y ago
And it doesn't see control modifiers when used through Lion OSX screen sharing (seems a lot like this bug: http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/ticket/180 http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/ticket/180 ).
drstrangevibes 14y ago
any decent mode for java yet? :-\

325 points by alexott 14y ago

gcv 14y ago

There's a slightly annoying regression (to Emacs 22, behavior, I believe) in the Mac version. Some Unicode characters (like —, “, and ”) cause the line to expand in height slightly. Does anyone know of a fix?

drothlis 14y ago
If you modify the default font, you also have to change the default "fontset", because merely changing the default font doesn't install it as the font for unicode characters. I use: (set-face-attribute 'default nil :family "Menlo" :height 120) (set-fontset-font "fontset-default" 'unicode "Menlo")
- gcv 14y ago
  Perfect. Thank you so much. Guess I don't know as much about Emacs as I thought. :)

Xyzodiac 14y ago

So does that mean it's officially stable? This is great news.

ConstantineXVI 14y ago
Yep. The current stable release is 24.1.[0] [0] http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
- Xyzodiac 14y ago
  Fantastic, thanks :)

carterschonwald 14y ago

Woah, emacs lisp now has lexical scoping

intranation 14y ago
It's opt-in, otherwise most packages would break. To enable it per-file use a file-local variable: ;;; -*- lexical-binding: t -*-
- perlgeek 14y ago
  How ironic. Wouldn't it make much sense to enable it per lexical scope? Or as Perl did it (18 years ago) with a new keyword, so that you can use both dynamic and lexical variables in the same file? Best of both worlds.
  - m00natic 14y ago
    Well, there has been lexical-let in the cl package for quite a while.
  - onedognight 14y ago
    You can use both in the same file; you just need to declare the dynamic ones using defvar, etc. If you turn lexical-binding on blindly, the compiler will usually tell you which variables you need to mark as dynamic.
  - unhammer 14y ago
    (eval form t) enables lexical scoping for form. http://yoo2080.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/lexical-scoping-and-dynamic-scoping-in-emacs-lisp/ http://yoo2080.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/lexical-scoping-and-... is highly recommended reading btw.
  - rcthompson 14y ago
    It has to be this way to remain backward-compatible. Similar to the issues Perl is going through with things like enabling strict by default (you have to request at least a certain version, I think 5.12), and distinguishing a Perl 6 file from Perl 5 one.

Garbage 14y ago

New features: - New packaging system and interface (M-x list-packages) for downloading and installing extensions. A default package archive is hosted by GNU and maintained by the Emacs developers. - Support for displaying and editing bidirectional text, including right-to-left scripts such as Arabic and Hebrew. - Support for lexical scoping in Emacs Lisp. - Improvements to the Custom Themes system (M-x customize-themes). - Unified and improved completion system in many modes and packages. - Support for GnuTLS (for built-in TLS/SSL encryption), GTK+ 3, ImageMagick, SELinux, and Libxml2. This looks great. :)

ruediger 14y ago
Complete list http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/NEWS.24.1 http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/NEWS.24.1
- Aethaeryn 14y ago
  You can also find out about the important changes from: C-h r m antinews RET This provides a changelog in the opposite direction, which is entertaining: For those users who live backwards in time, here is information about downgrading to Emacs version 23.4. We hope you will enjoy the greater simplicity that results from the absence of many Emacs 24.1 features. ----- It can be found online here: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Antinews.html http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Ant...

kcbanner 14y ago

Great news!

Deutscher 14y ago

Does anyone know if/when it will be available via Ubuntu Software Center or some PPA? I am on Ubuntu 12.04.

ruediger 14y ago
There is a PPA for the snapshot https://launchpad.net/~cassou/+archive/emacs https://launchpad.net/~cassou/+archive/emacs http://emacs.naquadah.org/ http://emacs.naquadah.org/ (Debian)

drstrangevibes 14y ago

oh frabjous day!

sliceof314 14y ago
Callooh! Callay!

munchor 14y ago

Awesome release! I've been waiting for this for a long time now. It will be in Arch Linux's repositories in a few hours. The package system is awesome, no more hassle installing plugins and extensions! Great job GNU, thank you!

mih 14y ago

Any idea when the precompiled Windows version will be released? Currently there seems to be no build http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/ http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/

alexott 14y ago
usually it takes not so much time (2-3 days) to release windows version
mdaniel 14y ago
This might not be appropriate for your situation, but I have found it surprisingly easy to build emacs from git by using MinGW/MSYS. If you need the exact command line, send me email or reply here and I'll post it when I get back to the office on Monday. The only non-trivial steps I had to take were to track down the "dev" msys packages for jpeg, png and xpm libraries. I do not link my nightly builds against gnutls, just to set expectations [my experience with non-native security stuff on windows leads me to avoid that headache; YMMV].
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
barik 14y ago
For what it's worth, the Windows binaries are now available: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-24.1-bin-i386.zip http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-24.1-bin-i386.zip

RShackleford 14y ago

i HATE emacs.

barik 14y ago

This means that I can finally try out Emacs Prelude [1]. Fantastic! I've been wanting to check it out for a while, but I haven't been brave enough to run a non-stable release of GNU Emacs. http://batsov.com/prelude/ http://batsov.com/prelude/

eschulte 14y ago
Same for the Literate Emacs24 Starter Kit (shameless plug by the maintainer). https://github.com/eschulte/emacs24-starter-kit https://github.com/eschulte/emacs24-starter-kit
- stephenlee 14y ago
  Wow, great job. Thanks!
rcthompson 14y ago
Non-stable is a relative term. Emacs daily development snapshots are more stable than the stable releases of most other software.
- Ixiaus 14y ago
  I can vouch for this, I've been running on daily for the last 2 years and have rarely encountered a game stopping issue.
metaguri 14y ago
What functionality does prelude provide? Unless I'm missing something, the website suggests that you can find out by "reading the source." I had a similar experience once with the emacs starter kit [1]. Though it's a noble effort and probably does have a ton of great features, there are some problems: you pretty much get all or nothing (ESK split it out into a "core" and "per-language" set of libraries but still, there's a lot of stuff) and it's hard to tell which things are emacs builtin and what is customizable. If you disagree with a customization you're SOL; I knew enough about emacs to know that some things had been customized, and I didn't like them, but it was nigh impossible to find out where they were customized and how to turn them off. It reminds me of the libraries vs frameworks discussion [2]. Emacs works well with libraries (with little elisp functions counting as "mini-libraries"), and the ESK/prelude seem like frameworks. I'm not trying to pick on these toolkits in particular. They are probably a good way to start out with emacs--I know that the ESK provides a bunch of features to make it more "friendly" out of the box for someone who is coming from something like TextMate. Most "old-school" emacs people I know have their own .emacs that have accumulated over years and years of trying to solve specific problems or customize that one thing that's annoyed the crap out of them for a while. My .emacs is not pages and pages, but it does have some good stuff in it. What I'd love to see (and maybe I'm inviting myself to do this) would be a tool (maybe ELPA is this tool, though It's hard to know) which allows you to search for, browse, and install elisp snippets to help you out. ELPA is good for bigger libraries (i.e. major modes) but not for "how do I create an unfill-paragraph function?" [1] https://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit https://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2762280 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2762280

alexott 14y ago

At the end of http://wikemacs.org/wiki/GNU_Emacs_24 http://wikemacs.org/wiki/GNU_Emacs_24 page, there are links to posts that describe changes in new version

st3fan 14y ago

So what is your favorite new feature?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
chc 14y ago
Having ELPA built in is really nice. If I'd had a package manager back when I was first learning Emacs, I think I would have resented it a lot less. And even now, having it available without fiddling with anything will be such a nicety.
unhammer 14y ago
I'm looking forward to trying ELPA (my .emacs.d is so full of stuff I've not yet gotten around to trying it). bi-di support is also really nice, I've been copypasting into other programs until now. Also always nice to get a new org-mode version (though I'm never quite sure whether using org makes me more productive, or whether playing with new org features makes me procrastinate more). Favourite feature that makes you go O_o : "`nato-region' converts text to NATO phonetic alphabet."

fungo 14y ago

wait for long time, really great!

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

onedognight 14y ago

Precompiled binaries for Emacs 24.1 are already available for OS X at http://emacsformacosx.com/ http://emacsformacosx.com/ .

__david__ 14y ago
You caught that quick! It only finished compiling a few minutes ago... (I generally kick off the release builds manually)
- gnufied 14y ago
  Last I checked your builds didn't had `ns-toggle-fullscreen`. Is that still the case? EDIT: Looks like emacsforosx does not compile Emacs with support for above command. Will you consider it? I totally understand distributing plain vanilla version though!
  - mwyvern 14y ago
    Homebrew includes that patch, and the recipe has been updated for emacs 24. brew update # Lion only (or if you don't have xcode?) brew tap homebrew/dupes brew install apple-gcc42 # put these in your .bashrc export HOMEBREW_USE_GCC=1 export HOMEBREW_VERBOSE=1 # /Lion only brew install emacs --cocoa brew linkapps
  - __david__ 14y ago
    No, I don't want to support a bunch of little patches on top of emacs. But it's frustrating for me, too, because I want the feature as much as anyone else. I've been making do with "(setq ns-auto-hide-menu-bar t)" which is close to the desired behavior, especially when combined with maxframe [1]. It still has the window's title bar, so it's not exactly there. [1] https://github.com/rmm5t/maxframe.el https://github.com/rmm5t/maxframe.el I use it like this (where super is the command key): (defun toggle-frame-maximization () (interactive) (if (frame-parameter nil 'mf-maximized) (restore-frame) (maximize-frame))) (define-key global-map [(super return)] 'toggle-frame-maximization)
- 14y ago

vamega 14y ago

I've been using the pretests for a while now, and the built in package manager has been an absolute joy to work with. If I were to begin writing extensions, I'd also probably enjoy the lexical scoping a lot more.

aashu_dwivedi 14y ago

the only time i hate the packaging system [apt] is when a new version of some software is released

technomancy 14y ago
It should be in nix shortly: http://nixos.org/nix http://nixos.org/nix Nix and apt are very complementary to each other; apt has all the stable never-breaks stuff, and nix has all the latest new code. And when you pull in something too new that breaks, you can roll it back trivially.

jmount 14y ago

OSX build seems to work really well: ./configure --with-gif=no --with-ns make make install

rickhutcheson 14y ago
Note to anyone attempting to build this on OS X: If you're getting strange errors when running make, ensure that you don't have the Mono framework installed as well. If you do, move it out of the way ( from /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework to some other directory) before you try to install. After the install, move it back.
throwdown 14y ago
I'm getting this: checking host system type... i386-apple-darwin11.3.0 configure: error: Emacs hasn't been ported to `i386-apple-darwin11.3.0' systems. Check `etc/MACHINES' for recognized configuration names.
jmount 14y ago
Ouch, sorry others are having trouble. Mine happened to work- but I don't know a lot about controlling the build config. And the formatting didn't survive pasting. Should have been: ./configure --with-gif=no --with-ns; make; make install
- throwdown 14y ago
  I built it from the sources in the emacs-24 branch without a problem. For some reason only the tarball sources threw up that config error. Strange.
pnathan 14y ago
As a note; ./configure --with-ns; make; make install, then copy to Applications.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

cbp 14y ago

Someday there will be a version where the new feature will be an actually useful wiki :p

neic 14y ago
There is a “next generation, better structured and improved wiki” at http://wikemacs.org/ http://wikemacs.org/

jmount 14y ago

And it doesn't see control modifiers when used through Lion OSX screen sharing (seems a lot like this bug: http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/ticket/180 http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/ticket/180 ).

drstrangevibes 14y ago

any decent mode for java yet? :-\