Kakoune just had another release–2020.08.04! Right now, though, the current version in the Ubuntu Apt repositories is 2019.07.01-1build1. That’s over a year old. When can we expect the updated version to be available in the Ubuntu universe repository?
Ubuntu is not a rolling-release distro, it takes a snapshot of Debian Testing every six months and whatever the current version happens to be at that point, that’s the version in the next Ubuntu release.
In this particular instance, Debian Testing didn’t get a package of v2020.01.16 until May, far too late to get into the Ubuntu 20.04LTS release. packages.ubuntu.com tells me that Ubuntu 20.10 will have at least v2020.01.16 in it, maybe even v2020.08.04 if Debian packages it in time.
Perhaps ironically, a new, updated version of v2020.01.16 landed in Debian Testing today, one that adds a few patches (presumably) cherry-picked from the git repo since there hadn’t been an official release in a while. Hopefully the Debian maintainer will still be in a packaging mood and package this new version quickly.
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I see. Thanks for pointing me to all of that. It makes sense now why so many users of Kakoune just install from git, me included.
For something like an editor, I always want the latest version. 
I can’t update to the latest version from git 
in the kakoune src repo I do:
git pull origin master
make clean
make
PREFIX=$HOME/.local make install
And I have:
$ kak -version
Kakoune v2020.01.16-509-ga82d61c1
$ kakoune/src/kak -version
Kakoune v2020.01.16-509-ga82d61c1
OK I got it.
Need to git checkout to the v2020.08.04 branch
I’m on master and have Kakoune v2019.07.01-956-ga82d61c1.