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Here’s an incomplete list of GNU Emacs releases. See also GNU Emacs Release History, the Emacs Timeline by JamieZawinski, and EmacsHistory for more information.
| Version | Release |
| 16.56 | 1985-07-15 |
| 17.36 | 1985-12-20 |
| 18.24 | 1986-10-02 |
| 18.59 | 1992-10-31 |
| 19.28 | 1994-11-01 |
| 19.34 | 1996-08-22 |
| 20.1 | 1997-09-15 |
| 20.2 | 1997-09-20 |
| 20.3 | 1998-08-19 |
| 20.4 | 1999-07-12 |
| 21.1 | 2001-10-20 |
| 21.2 | 2002-03-16 |
| 21.3 | 2003-03-24 |
| 21.4 | 2005-02-08 |
| 22.1 | 2007-06-03 |
| 22.2 | 2008-03-26 |
| 22.3 | 2008-09-06 |
| 23.1 | 2009-07-29 |
| 23.2 | 2010-05-08 |
| 23.3 | 2011-03-10 |
| 23.4 | 2012-01-29 |
| 24.1 | 2012-06-10 |
| 24.2 | 2012-08-27 |
| 24.3 | 2013-03-10 |
| 24.4 | 2014-10-20 |
| 24.5 | 2015-04-10 |
| 25.1 | 2016-09-17 |
| 25.2 | 2017-04-21 |
| 25.3 | 2017-09-11 |
| 26.1 | 2018-05-28 |
| 26.2 | 2019-04-12 |
| 26.3 | 2019-08-28 |
| 27.1 | 2020-08-10 |
| 27.2 | 2021-03-25 |
| 28.1 | 2022-04-04 |
| 28.2 | 2022-09-12 |
| 29.1 | 2023-07-30 |
| 29.2 | 2024-01-18 |
| 29.3 | 2024-03-24 |
The rest of this page contains interesting conversations from EmacsMailingLists about releasing Emacs 21.
The standard response is this one:
“Bas” writes:
As soon as it’s ready,
An excerpt from Irving Stone’s Agony and the Ecstasy.
During all these months the Pope kept insisting that Michelangelo complete his ceiling quickly, quickly! Then one day [Pope] Julius climbed the ladder unannounced.
‘When will it be finished?’
‘When I have satisfied myself.’
‘Satisfied yourself in what? You have already taken four full years.’
‘In the matter of art, Holy Father.’
‘It is my pleasure that you finish it in a matter of days.’
‘It will be done, Holy Father, when it will be done.’
We’ve had different answers, too, however. It all started with a mail by Thaddeus L. Olczyk in summer 01 [1]:
People are once again asking about Emacs 21, and it’s been about four weeks since I asked this question. So once again I ask this question to stall all the posters that will soon come asking.
[…]
It’s not that we know the date but don’t want to tell. We really don’t know. As long as there are reports about crashes on popular platforms, we won’t release. And just the other day I saw two crash reports, after at least 2-3 weeks without a single one.
Hopefully.
Most probably.
Unlikely.
Inconceivable.
“Allan Peda” wrote:
90 91 2 92 10 93 13 94 6 95 23 96 13 97 2 98 16 99 18 100 9 101 22 102 1 103 33 104 66
First column is prerelease number, second one is the number of days between the prerelease and the previous one.
Discounting the one-digit rows as quick corrections of small oversights, it is easy to see that things seems to be converging towards stabilization.
(BTW, I’m not speaking for the Emacs maintainters, which I am not).
Thaddeus L. Olczyk wrote:
EliZaretskii wrote:
Jonadab the Unsightly One wrote:
And what exactly are you going to do about that, huh? Switch to XEmacs, perhaps??
Jonadab the Unsightly One writes:
But think how good it’ll be,
GalenBoyer wrote:
those who know me have no need of my name wrote:
‘Pi’ meant the irrational number 3.1415…) calls for about 3000 years of additional testing.David Koppelman wrote:
ToDate[FromDate[{2001,7,13,0,0,0}] + Floor[N[104^Pi]] 3600 24])
(calendar-gregorian-from-absolute
(+ 5944 (calendar-absolute-from-gregorian (calendar-current-date)))))
I think your calculations are wrong (3000 years is much closer to the accurate result than 5944), and I didn’t have any trouble adding that with calendar (you just have to add days instead of years). But if you think something is wrong with calendar, please make a bug report. E.g., “Emacs’s Calendar is unable to compute the date of its own final release”.