As he has for the past several releases, Mickey over at Mastering Emacs has perused the NEWS file for the upcoming Emacs 24.4 and produced an informative post on what’s new. There are a couple of good reasons to read his post. The first is obvious: curiosity as to what’s coming. The average Emacs Knight is going to be excited at the prospect of a new release and will want to know what’s in it.
The second reason is advance planning. Most of us have large and complex Emacs initialization systems and each new release can break it in various ways. For example, Emacs 24.4 has removed or renamed several functions that your init.el or associated files might use. Similarly, some commands have had their functionality changed in subtle ways that may interact with your custom Elisp. Finally, new capabilities have been added that may negate the need for some of your custom code.
You can always discover this stuff by reading the NEWS file when you install the new Emacs but I like having advance notice of what I should be looking for. Even if you don’t agree, you know you’re curious so go on over to Mastering Emacs and read Mickey’s post.