Re: Re: Emacs 21.4.1 support

[Andrew Stribblehill <ads@wompom.org>]

2009/9/14 Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>:
> "Jing Su @ Gmail" <Jing.Su.66@gmail.com> writes:
>
> Hi Jing,
>
>> I fully understand that Emacs 21 is way out of date. However, since
>> RHEL is one of the mainstream commercial distros, and is common on
>> servers, it would be great if org-mode can be consistent with such
>> ``industrial standard'' (which is always way out of date :S ).
>
> Emacs 21.4 is nearly 4 years old!  Org-mode uses quite a bunch of more
> or less recent emacs features, so getting it fully working would be
> quite a hassle with a lot of compatibility code.
>
> Maybe an older org-mode version supports emacs 21.4 and has all features
> you need.  But I cannot find a downloads page for old versions...
>
> Or get the git version and use the revision before the commit
> 31858e5c39404cf2bc745fe05f59c7ce6816db74.
>
> ,----
> | commit 31858e5c39404cf2bc745fe05f59c7ce6816db74
> | Author: Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>
> | Date:   Tue Apr 21 14:00:24 2009 +0200
> |
> |     End of Emacs 21 support.
> `----
>
>> System administrators will take risk to install unofficial org-mode,
>> but most of them won't risk the whole server, i.e., risk their necks,
>> for a newer but unofficial (according to RH) Emacs version.
>
> You could compile and install emacs in your $HOME.  The INSTALL file
> coming with it tells how to do that.

I agree. In fact, when I was a real sysadmin, I used to maintain a
local build of Emacs  for my users.

However, I tried compiling the latest org-mode with Emacs 21.4 and
basic functionality works: tab, shift-tab, TODO, the day/week view of
the agenda -- and these are the only things I've tried.

See for yourself how well an org-mode build works and it may turn out
not to be an issue.