On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 5:21 PM Ruy Exel <ruyexel@gmail.com> wrote:

> The "Column width and alignment" feature of org-mode (
> http://orgmode.org/manual/Column-width-and-alignment.html) is not working
> in the latest GIT version (as of Fri Dec 8 20:06:59 BRST 2017).
>
> I have just tested it in the table
>
>   |---+------------------------------|
>   |   | <6>                          |
>   | 1 | one                          |
>   | 2 | two                          |
>   | 3 | This is a long chunk of text |
>   | 4 | four                         |
>   |---+------------------------------|
>
> which is actually the example given in the manual.  It fails under the
> latest version (column width is unchanged upon alignment)
>

I am assuming you are using the master/development version of Org from git?
If so, see this in ORG-NEWS:

*** =align= STARTUP value no longer narrow table columns

Columns narrowing (or shrinking) is now dynamic. See [[*Dynamically
narrow table columns]] for details. In particular, it is decoupled from
aligning.

If you need to automatically shrink columns upon opening an Org
document, use =shrink= value instead, or in addition to align:

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
,#+STARTUP: align shrink
#+END_EXAMPLE




> but it works OK in an older version (Org version 7.9.3f - GNU Emacs 24.3).
>

Wow! That's a very old version!

As you are making this big version upgrade, it would be worthwhile to go
through the whole of
http://orgmode.org/cgit.cgi/org-mode.git/tree/etc/ORG-NEWS and make a note
of new features and few breaking changes since that version.
-- 

Kaushal Modi