Re: Discussion about why GNU/Linux system upgrades cause old programs to break

Richard Stallman <[email protected]> Sun, 09 Aug 2026 15:37:32 -0400
Newsgroups gmane.emacs.devel
Message-ID <[email protected]>
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  > Trying to run old versions of Emacs I've built myself on that very
  > system:

  >   eliz@fencepost:~$ emacs-28.x/emacs-28.0.90/src/emacs -Q
  >   eliz@fencepost:~$ emacs-27.x/emacs-27.2/src/emacs -Q
 
  >   emacs-27.x/emacs-27.2/src/emacs: error while loading shared
  >   libraries: libgtk-3.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such
  >   file or directory 127 eliz@fencepost:~$

It looks like 28.x did work, because you report no error message from it.
But 27.2 failed.

27.2 was released in March, 2021.  That is 5 years ago.  I think we
shouldn't break programs that quickly!  I think our tools should
continue to support a program for many more years than that.

Now that I have specific reports, I can discuss them with maintainers.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)