Note: XEmacs 21.4 has been promoted to stable, and the XEmacs 21.1 series has been retired. For those with classic taste, these historical releases are still available. We will continue to support, at a lower level, 21.1 users. See the announcement of 21.4.12 for details.

The stable release series is for those who wish to minimize risk of crashes and other critical failures, perhaps at the expense of functionality.

Stable releases are the series of releases we expect you to get no surprises from, whether you follow the XEmacs mailing lists and newsgroups or not. They have been extensively tested by beta testers. In the 21.4 series there have been over a dozen public releases so far, so they have also been extensively tested by ordinary users, some who are total ``newbies'' as well as some who are more sophisticated than most of our beta testers.

We undertake to make no changes to the stable code that are not absolutely required to fix substantial bugs that can cause data loss (including crashes, which can always destroy data) or open security holes. All changes must be approved by the 21.4 Release Manager, Vin Shelton.

The stable release series receives little attention unless a bug is reported.

2009-01-30: [21.4.22 release notice]
2007-11-10: [21.4.21 release notice]
2006-12-10: [21.4.20 release notice]
2006-01-30: [21.4.19 release notice]
2005-12-05: [21.4.18 release notice]
2005-02-06: [21.4.17 release notice]
2004-12-11: [21.4.16 release notice]
2004-02-03: [21.4.15 release notice]
2003-09-07: [21.4.14 release notice]
2003-05-26: [21.4.13 release notice]
2003-01-16: [21.4.12 release notice]
2003-01-03: [21.4.11 release notice]
2002-11-02: [21.4.10 release notice]
2002-08-24: [21.4.9 release notice]
2002-05-09: [21.4.8 release notice]
2002-05-04: [21.4.7 release notice]
2001-12-17: [21.4.6 release notice]
2001-10-23: [21.4.5 release notice]
2001-07-28: [21.4.4 release notice]
2001-05-17: [21.4.3 release notice]
2001-05-10: [21.4.2 release notice]
2001-04-19: [21.4.1 release notice]
2001-04-16: [21.4.0 release notice]

Download a stable release from ftp.xemacs.org or a mirror in your country:

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Gamma XEmacs Releases

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Note: XEmacs 21.4 has been promoted to stable, and there currently is no gamma series. Plans for the next release are in the works.

The gamma series of releases is satisfactorily stable for most sophisticated users. Most Linux or *BSD users should get the best results from the gamma series, and we strongly recommend it to the ``tester'' distributions like NetBSD current, Debian sid, Mandrake Cooker, Red Hat Rawhide, and so on. XEmacs will be ready when they are!

The gamma series of releases is the candidate for promotion to a stable series. Although we do not promote the code base to gamma while there are known critical bugs in the code base, to attempt to meet schedules we also do promote fairly quickly once we've fixed the last known critical bug. Everybody does this, and everybody knows that despite the best efforts of the developers, ``point oh'' releases typically still have bugs in them. The gamma concept simply acknowledges this.

The gamma concept allows us to expand our tester base substantially beyond our dedicated beta testers, while warning the administrators or users that we still acknowledge some risk of more or less serious bugs we don't yet know about. It also offers the kinds of users who use ``tester'' Linux distributions a much more featureful application with low, but not absolutely minimal, risk.

The gamma series receives active attention on a daily basis from the core developers. Important bugs that do not imply data loss, including problems with font-locking in C and Lisp modes will be addressed in the gamma series. Low-risk fixes that provide most of the missing functionality are the priority. The primary goal is strictly increasing stability. Improved functionality consistent with improving stability is secondary, and basically limited to the as-yet immature MS Windows port. All changes must be approved by the Gamma Release Manager.

Users of the gamma series should read the release announcement, and the NEWS and PROBLEMS files carefully, as many of the known issues will not yet be reflected in the FAQ or Info documentation.

No Gamma XEmacs releases available for download.

Beta XEmacs Releases

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The beta series of releases is for testers. Users should read the XEmacs Beta mailing list, <xemacs-beta@xemacs.org>. Users should prepare themselves for crashes, data loss, freezes, and other unpleasant events. The beta series contains much experimental code, and fairly large changes may be introduced directly into the code base. These are announced as they happen on xemacs-beta. Wannabe developers may also want to follow the XEmacs Patches <xemacs-patches@xemacs.org> and XEmacs CVS Commits <xemacs-cvs@xemacs.org> mailing lists for up-to-the-minute details about the state of the code base.

Core developers commit directly to the CVS repository, with an approval from any of the XEmacs Review Board members. There is no centralized control over the beta code base.

This code base is under constant development. Watch xemacs-cvs for a while and see for yourself!

About numbering: The stable and gamma series each have unique major and minor version numbers (21.1 and 21.4 respectively). This reflects the fact that except for critical fixes these code bases are frozen. They are branches from the development trunk. (In fact, they are implemented as CVS branches.)

The beta series reflects the dynamic history of XEmacs development. Major and minor version numbers will change whenever a public release is made. The 21.1 branch occurred before this page was created, but the 21.4 branch is visible as the gap between 21.2.47 and 21.5.0. (There never was a version 21.3, and never will be. At the time we were planning the public release of the 21.2 development code base, we adopted the familiar Linux convention that odd minor versions indicate unstable, development releases, and even minor version indicate stable releases. Thus that code was frozen and released as 21.4.0.)

The 21.5 series will be the trunk version until the next public release is made, which will probably be numbered 22.0 to reflect large changes currently under development in our Mule implementation for multilingual text processing. In that case, the following beta release will be 22.1.1.

2023-05-13: [21.5.35 release notice] [changelogs]
2013-06-24: [21.5.34 release notice] [changelogs]
2013-01-04: [21.5.33 release notice] [changelogs]
2012-08-02: [21.5.32 release notice] [changelogs]
2011-04-29: [21.5.31 release notice] [changelogs]
2011-04-27: [21.5.30 release notice] [changelogs]
2009-05-19: [21.5.29 release notice] [changelogs]
2007-05-21: [21.5.28 release notice] [changelogs]
2006-05-16: [21.5.27 release notice] [changelogs]
2006-03-31: [21.5.26 release notice] [changelogs]
2006-02-26: [21.5.25 release notice] [changelogs]
2005-12-19: [21.5.24 release notice] [changelogs]
2005-10-26: [21.5.23 release notice] [changelogs]
2005-09-14: [21.5.22 release notice] [changelogs]
2005-05-28: [21.5.21 release notice] [changelogs]
2005-03-12: [21.5.20 release notice] [changelogs]
2005-02-18: [21.5.19 release notice] [changelogs]
2004-10-22: [21.5.18 release notice] [changelogs]
2004-03-22: [21.5.17 release notice] [changelogs]
2003-09-26: [21.5.16 release notice] [changelogs]
2003-09-05: [21.5.15 release notice] [changelogs]
2003-06-02: [21.5.14 release notice] [changelogs]
2003-05-11: [21.5.13 release notice] [changelogs]
2003-04-25: [21.5.12 release notice] [changelogs]
2003-02-17: [21.5.11 release notice] [changelogs]
2003-01-10: [21.5.10 release notice] [changelogs]
2002-08-31: [21.5.9 release notice]
2002-07-27: [21.5.8 release notice]
2002-07-03: [21.5.7 release notice] [changelogs]
2002-04-05: [21.5.6 release notice] [changelogs]
2002-03-06: [21.5.5 release notice] [changelogs]
2002-01-09: [21.5.4 release notice] [changelogs]
2001-09-07: [21.5.3 release notice] [changelogs]
2001-07-28: [21.5.2 release notice] [changelogs]
2001-05-09: [21.5.1 release notice] [changelogs]
2001-04-14: [21.2.47 release notice]
2001-03-21: [21.2.46 release notice] [changelogs]
2001-02-23: [21.2.45 release notice] [changelogs]
2001-02-08: [21.2.44 release notice] [changelogs]
2001-01-28: [21.2.43 release notice] [changelogs]
2001-01-20: [21.2.42 release notice] [changelogs]
2001-01-17: [21.2.41 release notice] [changelogs]
2001-01-08: [21.2.40 release notice] [changelogs]
2000-12-31: [21.2.39 release notice] [changelogs]
2000-12-05: [21.2.38 release notice] [changelogs]
2000-11-15: [21.2.37 release notice] [changelogs]
2000-10-04: [21.2.36 release notice] [changelogs]
2000-07-19: [21.2.35 release notice] [changelogs]
2000-05-29: [21.2.34 release notice] [changelogs]
2000-05-02: [21.2.33 release notice] [changelogs]
2000-03-20: [21.2.32 release notice] [changelogs]
2000-02-23: [21.2.31 release notice] [changelogs]
2000-02-22: [21.2.30 release notice] [changelogs]
2000-02-16: [21.2.29 release notice] [changelogs]
2000-02-07: [21.2.28 release notice] [changelogs]
2000-01-18: [21.2.27 release notice] [changelogs]

Download a beta release from ftp.xemacs.org or a mirror in your country:

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Historical XEmacs Releases

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2001-01-27: [21.1.14 release notice]
2001-01-07: [21.1.13 release notice]
2000-08-05: [21.1.12 release notice]
2000-07-18: [21.1.11 release notice]
2000-05-07: [21.1.10 release notice]
2000-02-13: [21.1.9 release notice]
1999-11-03: [21.1.8 release notice]
1999-09-20: [21.1.7 release notice] [changelogs]
1999-08-14: [21.1.6 release notice]

No Historical XEmacs releases available for download.

Offical Package Releases

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These packages enhance XEmacs' utility as briefly documented under XEmacs Packages.

2009-02-17: [2009-02-17 release notice] [changelogs]
2007-04-27: [2007-04-27 release notice] [changelogs]
2006-05-10: [2006-05-10 release notice] [changelogs]
2005-12-08: [2005-12-08 release notice] [changelogs]
2005-07-15: [2005-07-15 release notice] [changelogs]
2005-05-05: [2005-05-05 release notice] [changelogs]
2005-03-07: [2005-03-07 release notice] [changelogs]
2005-01-18: [2005-01-18 release notice] [changelogs]
2004-08-18: [2004-08-18 release notice] [changelogs]
2004-05-17: [2004-05-17 release notice] [changelogs]
2004-02-02: [2004-02-02 release notice] [changelogs]

Download XEmacs Packages inside XEmacs using the Tools->Packages menu, from ftp.xemacs.org, or from a mirror in your country:

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Package Pre-Releases

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These pre-release packages (enhancing XEmacs' utility as briefly documented under XEmacs Packages) serve the purpose of quick turn-around and testing before they get officially released.

Download XEmacs Pre-Release Packages inside XEmacs using the Tools->Packages menu, from ftp.xemacs.org, or from a mirror in your country:

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