Updated to Emacs 29.2, just now.
Took me and my four core workhorse about fifteen minutes tops, from start to finish.

Emacs 29.0 was the first version I compiled from source, because I wanted the latest release as soon as it was out and I no longer had the patience for the kindly distribution folk (or third party packagers) to give me a binary.
The first time was a nightmare.
I didn’t have various bits and bobs that were needed. Stuff that the guides say should work a certain way wouldn’t.
But it did happen eventually and I learnt a lot along the way about what I wanted compiled in, in my Emacs.
I also appreciated just how much easier it is now to compile stuff and recover from errors. I tried this last in the late 90s1 and it scared me off.

But like I was saying … now that I have it all set up, 29.1 and 29.2 have been a breeze.
I’d never have guessed, updating software, by compiling from source, would be so painless.2


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  1. I compiled the linux kernel. Bold first step. I know 😂 ↩︎

  2. I know, there will be hiccoughs. But even so, this is so much better than what I imagined in my head. ↩︎