Automake-1.12.1

[xinglp]

From: stefano.lattarini@… To: autotools-announce@…

We are pleased to announce the Automake 1.12.1 maintenance release.

This release:

• fixes few minor bugs, and some weaknesses in the Automake's own testsuite and build system;

• removes and some inefficiencies in the implementation of the 'check' and 'recheck' targets (as offered by the parallel testuite harness);

• introduces several new warnings meant to inform the users about upcoming backward-incompatibilities that we plan to introduce in the next major Automake version (1.13).

• introduces built-in support for the Objective C++ programming language (thanks to Peter Breitenlohner for this).

See below for the detailed list of changes since Automake 1.12, as summarized by the NEWS file.

Download here:

​ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.12.1.tar.gz ​ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.12.1.tar.xz

Please report bugs and problems to <bug-automake@…>, and send general comments and feedback to <automake@…>.

Thanks to everyone who has reported problems, contributed patches, and helped testing Automake!

• -*-*-*-

New in 1.12.1:

• WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!

• Starting from either the next minor version (1.12.2) or the next major version (1.13), Automake will start warning if 'configure.in' is used instead of 'configure.ac' as the Autoconf input. Future versions of Automake will drop support for 'configure.in' altogether.

• Autoconf 2.65 or later will be required by the next major Automake version (1.13). Until now, Automake has required Autoconf version 2.62 or later.

• Starting from the next major Automake version (1.13), the rules to build pdf, ps and dvi output from Texinfo input will use the '--tidy' option by default. Since such an option was introduced in Texinfo 4.9, this means that Makefiles generated by future Automake versions will require at least that version of Texinfo.

• Starting from the next major Automake version (1.13), the parallel testsuite harness (previously only enabled by the 'parallel-tests' option) will become the default one; the older serial testsuite harness will still be available through the use of the 'serial-tests' option.

• The following long-obsolete m4 macros will be removed in the next major Automake version (1.13):

AM_PROG_CC_STDC: superseded by AC_PROG_CC since October 2002 fp_PROG_CC_STDC: broken alias for AM_PROG_CC_STDC fp_WITH_DMALLOC: old alias for AM_WITH_DMALLOC AM_CONFIG_HEADER: superseded by AC_CONFIG_HEADERS since July 2002 ud_PATH_LISPDIR: old alias for AM_PATH_LISPDIR jm_MAINTAINER_MODE: old alias for AM_MAINTAINER_MODE ud_GNU_GETTEXT: old alias for AM_GNU_GETTEXT gm_PROG_LIBTOOL: old alias for AC_PROG_LIBTOOL fp_C_PROTOTYPES: old alias for AM_C_PROTOTYPES (which was part

of the now-removed automatic de-ANSI-fication support of Automake)

• All the "old alias" macros in 'm4/obsolete.m4' will be removed in the next major Automake version (1.13).

• Support for the two- and three-arguments invocation forms of the AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE macro will be deprecated in the next minor version of Automake (1.12.1) and removed in the next major version (1.13).

• The '--acdir' option of aclocal is deprecated, and will probably be removed in the next major Automake release (1.13). You should use the options '--automake-acdir' and '--system-acdir' instead (which have been introduced in Automake 1.11.2).

• The exact order in which the directories in the aclocal macro search path are looked up is probably going to be changed in the next Automake release (1.13).

• New supported languages:

• Support for Objective C++ has been added; it should work similarly to the support for Objective C.

• Deprecated obsolescent features:

• Use of the long-deprecated two- and three-arguments invocation forms of the AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE macro now elicits a warning in the 'obsolete' category. Starting from the next major Automake release (1.13), such usages won't be allowed anymore.

• Support for the "Cygnus-style" trees (enabled by the 'cygnus' option) is now deprecated (its use triggers a warning in the 'obsolete' category). It will be removed in the next major Automake release (1.13).

• The long-obsolete (since 1.10) automake-provided $(mkdir_p) make variable, @mkdir_p@ configure-time substitution and AM_PROG_MKDIR m4 macro are deprecated, eliciting a warning in the 'obsolete' category. They will be removed in the next major version (1.13).

• Miscellaneous changes:

• The Automake test cases now require a proper POSIX-conforming shell. Older non-POSIX Bourne shells (like Solaris 10 /bin/sh) won't be accepted anymore. In most cases, the user shouldn't have to specify such POSIX shell explicitly, since it will be looked up at configure time. Still, when this lookup fails, or when the user wants to override its conclusion, the variable 'AM_TEST_RUNNER_SHELL' can be used (pointing to the shell that will be used to run the Automake test cases).

Bugs fixed in 1.12.1:

• Bugs introduced by 1.12:

• Several weaknesses in Automake's own build system and test suite have been fixed.

• Bugs introduced by 1.11.3:

• When given non-option arguments, aclocal rejects them, instead of silently ignoring them.

• Long-standing bugs:

• When the 'color-tests' option is in use, forcing of colored testsuite output through "AM_COLOR_TESTS=always" works even if the terminal is a non-ANSI one, i.e., if the TERM environment variable has a value of "dumb".

• Several inefficiencies and poor performances in the implementation of the parallel-tests 'check' and 'recheck' targets have been fixed.

• The post-processing of output "#line" directives done the ylwrap script is more faithful w.r.t. files in a subdirectory; for example, if the processed file is "src/grammar.y", ylwrap will correctly produce directives like:

#line 7 "src/grammar.y"

rather than like

#line 7 "grammar.y"

as it did before.

• Bugs with new Perl versions:

• Aclocal works correctly with perl 5.16.0 (automake bug#11543).

[Matthew Burgess]

Fixed in r9874.