How to upgrade to the latest Emacs?

I have Emacs 24.3.1 and I'd like to upgrade to the latest Emacs 24.4.x. All documentation that I have visited suggests building from a tarball or source. Is there a reason why there are no package manager options to upgrade my Emacs? If not, how do I upgrade my Emacs using the package manager?

Here is some info about my Emacs, which I believe comes default on Ubuntu 14.04:

emacs: Installed: 45.0ubuntu1 Candidate: 45.0ubuntu1 Version table: *** 45.0ubuntu1 0 500 trusty/main amd64 Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

3 Answers

You can install the nightly packages from the ubuntu-elisp ppa.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-elisp/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install emacs-snapshot

3

Emacs 24.4 is still relatively new. Ubuntu is considered a stable distro, and for that reason software sometimes lags behind. If Emacs 24.4 isn't packaged, you'll need to build it yourself.

You can find comprehensive instructions on how to install GNU Emacs 24.4 on Ubuntu in this guide:

You can also use the Emacs stable releases PPA, e.g.:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kelleyk/emacs
sudo apt update
sudo apt install emacs28

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