Emacs 31.1 Arrives With Fresh Editing and Performance Upgrades
Emacs 31.1 has landed, and Mastering Emacs has published a detailed rundown of what's changed. The release focuses on refining existing workflows rather than reinventing the editor: improvements to built-in completion, tweaks to how buffers and windows behave, and various performance and bug fixes accumulated since the last major version.
The update also continues Emacs' slow modernization, with better defaults for things like whitespace handling and package management, aimed at reducing the amount of manual configuration long-time users have come to expect. Nothing here is flashy, but the changes reflect steady maintenance of a tool that remains popular among developers who prefer text-based, extensible environments over modern IDEs.
The Hacker News discussion around the article shows the usual mix of enthusiasm from longtime users and curiosity from newcomers wondering if Emacs is worth the learning curve in 2025.