Re: Support of older Emacs versions

[Julian Bradfield]

On 2024-07-13, Göran Uddeborg <goeran@uddeborg.se> wrote:
[...]
> I would question if we need to go back even that far. Isn't it good
> enough to support the current version of emacs, i.e. 29 right now, for
> any new versions of VM.
>
> I live mostly in the Fedora world, but I understand both Debian 11 and
> Ubuntu 20.04 are old. Would the packager for those distributions
> really update VM? Without emacs itself being updated? That is not how I
> package for Fedora; the latest and/or upcoming release gets the latest
> VM, older stay where they are unless something actually breaks.

Outside the developer world, many people run on systems long past even
their official dates. (I know many people running Windows 7.) Now you
could argue that anybody using VM is probably a developer - but that's
not true, as I know because I get to support the other VM users in my
department!  You could also argue that people like that aren't going
to want to upgrade VM, and that may be true.

Debian 11 is not "old" - it will soon enter its LTS phase, which lasts
until late 2026. My department is still in the process of switching
from Ubuntu 20 to Ubuntu 21.