Changes/Emacs 28

Emacs 28

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

Summary

Update GNU Emacs to 28.1 release. This release includes a wide variety of new features, including native compilation of Lisp files.

Owner

• Name: Bhavin Gandhi
• Email: bhavin192@fedoraproject.org

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora Linux 37
• Last updated: 2022-07-26
• devel thread
• FESCo issue: #2845
• Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
• Release notes tracker: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

The Emacs package will be updated to 28.1 release of GNU Emacs. This will have native compilation feature enabled, and will package additional natively compiled Lisp files.

Benefit to Fedora

This major version of Emacs has bugfixes and new features which also improve the overall speed of Emacs.

Scope

• Proposal owners: Upgrade the Emacs package to 28.1
• Other developers: N/A
• Release engineering: N/A (not needed for this Change)
• Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)
• Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
• Alignment with Objectives: N/A

Upgrade/compatibility impact

Users might see some warnings while their installed Emacs packages get natively compiled after first launch post the upgrade. These warnings won't break any functionality, though the users are encouraged to update their Emacs packages.

How To Test

1. Run dnf update emacs
2. Open Emacs and check if inbuilt functionalities and packages work as indented.

User Experience

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/#Releases

• Lisp files are natively compiled, this results in speed improvements for most of the functionalities
• Much improved display of Emoji and Emoji sequences
• New system for documenting groups of functions

Dependencies

N/A

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) N/A (not a System Wide Change)
• Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
• Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change), No

Documentation

• https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/news/NEWS.28.1
• https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/emacs/pull-request/12

Release Notes

The upstream release notes are available at https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/news/NEWS.28.1

These can also be accessed from within Emacs by doing C-h n.