Update on Aquamacs development

[Win Treese]

Hi, Aquamacs friends. It's been a while since Aquamacs 3.6 came out, and it might seem like not much is going on. Here's an update, which I'm posting on both the main Aquamacs list (macosx...@email.esm.psu.edu) and the Aquamacs developer list (aquamac...@googlegroups.com).

First, Aquamacs 3.6 seems to be very stable. The number of crash reports has dropped to a trickle. There are still quite a few known issues, mostly minor, including a problem with installing the command line tools. Almost all of the problems I'm aware of are in the Github issue tracker at https://github.com/aquamacs-emacs/aquamacs-emacs/issues.

Second, the main work at the moment is updating Aquamacs to Emacs version 28. For a long time, it's been based on Emacs 25, and a lot has happened with the main version of Emacs in that time. For many of us, a big challenge with Aquamacs is not being able to install and use many recent Emacs add-on packages easily because of version requirements. Being up-to-date with Emacs 28 will fix that, as well as make it easier to update Aquamacs incrementally as future Emacs development continues.

As you might guess, there are a lot of changes between Emacs 25 and Emacs 28, including native support for the Apple M1/M2 CPUs that many of us are using now. Aquamacs works fine under Rosetta, but a native version would be nice (and quite a bit faster).

The vast number of changes means a lot of work in merging the code together. Some of it can be done automatically, and then checked to make sure it works. Other times the same parts of the code have changed in both the Aquamacs project and the main Emacs projects, and those changes need to be reconciled together.

That's what I've been working on for a while now, and it's a long haul. Unfortunately, it's work that doesn't have good intermediate results, so there's nothing visible about it right now. It's also hard to guess when it will be done; this kind of merge is like driving in the fog at night on a winding road; you might only realize that you've arrived when suddenly the destination appears around a curve.

I'm planning to make a preliminary, try-at-your-own-risk version available as soon as I can.

I'd also like to thank those who are sponsoring this continued work on Aquamacs through Github Sponsors. Your support means a lot.

Thanks for your patience as we get through this phase of Aquamacs development.

Best,

Win

Win Treese
Aquamacs maintainer
tre...@acm.org
My new book of poetry is now available:
In the Cloud: Poems for a Technological Age
https://win.treese.org/in-the-cloud

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Oct 1, 2022, at 4:27, Win Treese <tre...@acm.org> wrote:
>
> I'm planning to make a preliminary, try-at-your-own-risk version available as soon as I can.

I eventually got used to working with Emacs, but I'd love to go try to go back to Aquamacs.


--
Jean-Christophe Helary @brandelune
https://traductaire-libre.org
https://mac4translators.blogspot.com
https://sr.ht/~brandelune/omegat-as-a-book/

[George Colpitts]

Hi Win

Can you give us an update on Aquamacs 4.0?

Thanks

George

[George Colpitts]

Hi Win

Can you give us an update?

Thanks

George

On Friday, September 30, 2022 at 4:27:11 PM UTC-3 Win Treese wrote:

[Win Treese]

> On Oct 3, 2023, at 7:35 PM, George Colpitts <george....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Win
>
> Can you give us an update?

Hi, George, and hello to the rest of you as well.

Yes, I can, and I apologize for not sending out anything for so long. And it’s good
timing.

First, thank you all for your patience.

Last week, I managed to compile and run (not quite correctly!) Aquamacs
based on the Emacs 28.3 sources, natively compiled on Apple Silicon.

Now I’m working on cleaning up the things that outright don’t work, so
it’s not quite usable. I’m hoping that doesn’t take too long. At that point,
I plan to make available a use-at-your-own-risk version for the adventurous
to try out, while trying to work through the main functions, menus, modes, etc.
to see if they are at least reasonably working. After that, I plan to merge
it up to Emacs 29.1, which should be much, much easier, and then release
test versions that will end up as Aquamacs 4.

Merging the versions was a bear, and several different approaches did
not work out. My latest attempt got things working, although the git
history is not as clean as I’d like. Because of that, I haven’t pushed any
of the changes to github, and I’ll do that when it’s more stable.

That said, if anyone is interested in helping to try things out and maybe
digging around in the code to figure out where bugs are, let me know, and
I’ll work on pushing it up sooner rather than later.

Thoughts and questions welcome, as always!

Best,

Win

Win Treese
tre...@acm.org
Aquamacs maintainer

[George Colpitts]

Thanks Win, that's great news! Thanks for all your work on this. Looking forward to trying out the beta at some point in the future.