The emacs-29 release branch was just cut by the amazing Eli Zaretskii!

Emacs 30 is here! 🚀

Does this mean distros can start packaging Emacs 29 in their repos?

Not yet! From [emacs-devel](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2022-11/msg01774.html): >I've cut the 'emacs-29' release branch, which starts the release cycle of Emacs 29.1. My hope is that the first pretest will be out in a couple of months or so, barring any serious problems we find in the codebase.

What are some of the big ticket items staged for Emacs-29?

[NEWS file](https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/etc/NEWS.29?h=emacs-29&id=65456668ab1048fe8d77dc76a9e4d84481c218a5) The biggest item for me is the much faster handling of long lines and overlays.

eglot and tree-sitter are two I've been liking a lot. I think sharing language support like this makes lots of sense.

I haven't followed the exact changes for this, but I've been building from master every couple of months, and my last few builds have been significantly faster, especially with tramp. This is subjective, of course, since I haven't properly measured anything, but it been a *very* noticeable, and appreciated, improvement.

What’s the usual time from branch-cut to release?

It usually takes a couple of months. There's a quote in this thread somewhere with more details.

https://yhetil.org/emacs-devel/83pmd6nbo3.fsf@gnu.org/T/#t Why not directly link to the message in the archive? This is just as worse as posting images of twitter posts but worse since that instance requires js to view it.

I think pgtk is supposed to be in emacs 29. This will be huge for those of us on Wayland with scaling enabled. Edit: [yep, emacs 29](https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/rj8k32/the_pgtk_pure_gtk_branch_was_merged/)

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Window transparency that does not apply to text. So, better readability when you swt your emacs window to be (partially) transparent.

I wonder if I will still be alive when it gets to 42? That's sentience, right?

Same. Rainy weekend... hit my update script and head out for a walk. Mind totally not focused on if I should have revised compile flags 😅

Also `package-vc`, which allows package installation directly from source.

Finally!!

We'll need planet-sized computers to run it...

* Emacs now supports setting 'user-emacs-directory' via '--init-directory'. -> This is great. I don't need chemacs any more. * New command to change the font size globally. * New command 'rename-visited-file'. * New command 'restart-emacs'. * New command 'package-update', 'package-update-all'. * New command 'recentf-open'.

pgtk, eglot, tree-sitter, sqlite

But it’s free & OS JS at least.

Finally!! Nice work!

Can I use that with use-package without having to use say quelpa?

Yes, but currently for in experience it doesn't play well with just any arbitrary repositories. The package to be pulled's metadata must conform to the ELPA (maybe) specs.

hmmm still freeze on visual line mode

>New command 'package-update', 'package-update-all'. Yay!!

Report this as a bug, please.

When I started drafting that post, there was no message on the list yet. I really caught the commit by accident shortly after it was made, and thought it would be fun to post on a mastodon server that is dedicated to Emacs. (I see now that that the mail announcement went out as I was busy making the mastodon post.)

Ah okay, I didn't know that. I was asleep when the branch was cut. Edit: I was simply afraid people would get used to these redirections just because it is mastodon.

Foss or not, it is JS nonetheless. Js is annoying when there's an alternative that does not require it.

To be fair, it is the \*emacs\* mastodon ;) (I'm joking, and I do agree with your point.)

I compiled from source a few months ago to get the ["Python shells dedicated to a project"](https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/commit/4932d26b5df14af01ae757b2a5232d157df69008) commit. It's be working well for me.

Could you define "cut a branch"? I keep seeing this but I don't know what it actually means even after some Googling. I could see it meaning "make a new branch", "delete a branch", or even "merge a branch", but it sounds like it might mean something totally different?

In this case "cut" means "make a new branch". I'm not familiar with the development workflow for Emacs. So I can only speculate on the purpose of the emacs-29 branch. My guess is to isolate this branch from any new/experimental features. So they can focus on getting the existing features ready for the next release. I assume they will periodically merge emacs-29 back into master so people working on new stuff won't diverge too far.

Thank you!