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

>>>>> On Wed, 12 Aug 2026, Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:

> Arsen Arsenović <[email protected]> writes:
>> This is because we're acting as integrators of said old Emacsen with
>> current software.
>> 
>> Here's, for instance, our recipe for building Emacs 24:
>> https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/proj/emacs.git/tree/app-editors/emacs/emacs-24.5-r11.ebuild

> This actually is great, because it references the patches used:

> https://dev.gentoo.org/~ulm/emacs/emacs-24.5-patches-5.tar.xz

> Would some of them be useful for Emacs upstream (i.e. for a new release
> of Emacs 24)?

> From what I can tell, these are backports from newer Emacs releases that
> ensure that old Emacses still work with new systems.

Not all of these patches are backports. Let's go through a more recent
example, the Gentoo patchset for Emacs 29.4:
https://gitweb.gentoo.org/proj/emacs-patches.git/tree/emacs/29.4

  01_all_sanity-check.patch:
    Reported by a Gentoo user, distro patch, reported upstream in
    https://debbugs.gnu.org/66721

  02_all_epg-gpmsm.patch:
    Backported from master, but it's a problem that I had previously
    reported (and provided a fix for) in https://debbugs.gnu.org/67012

  03_all_autoconf-2.72.patch:
    Backported from master.

  04_all_flymake-gcc-14.patch:
    Distro patch, reported upstream in https://debbugs.gnu.org/71749

  05_all_erc-network-tests.patch:
    Distro patch, reported upstream in https://debbugs.gnu.org/73036

  06_all_man.patch:
    Backported from Emacs 30 (security fix)

  07_all_trusted-content.patch:
    Backported from Emacs 30 (security fix)
  
  08_all_treesit-0.26.patch:
    Backported from master

  09_all_shorthands.patch:
    Backported from emacs-31 (security fix)

I hope this shows that we contribute our patches (unless they are distro
specific) back to the upstream project.

In fact, this is mandated by the Gentoo Social Contract
<https://www.gentoo.org/get-started/philosophy/social-contract.html#we-will-give-back-to-the-free-software-community>:

"We will submit bug-fixes, improvements, user requests, etc. to the
'upstream' authors of software included in our system."