automake-1.16

[bdubbs@…]

New minor version.

[bdubbs@…]

New in 1.16:

• Miscellaneous changes

• When subdir-objects is in effect, Automake will now construct shorter object file names when no programs and libraries name clashes are encountered. This should make the discouraged use of 'foo_SHORTNAME' unnecessary in many cases.

• Bugs fixed:

• Automatic dependency tracking has been fixed to work also when the 'subdir-object' option is used and some 'foo_SOURCES' definition contains unexpanded references to make variables, as in, e.g.:

          a_src = sources/libs/aaa
          b_src = sources/bbb
          foo_SOURCES = $(a_src)/bar.c $(b_src)/baz.c
  

  With such a setup, the created makefile fragment containing dependency tracking information will be correctly placed under the directories named 'sources/libs/aaa/.deps' and 'sources/bbb/.deps', rather than mistakenly under directories named (literally!) '$(src_a)/.deps' and '$(src_b)/.deps' (this was the first part of automake bug#13928).

Notice that in order to fix this bug we had to slightly change the semantics of how config.status bootstraps the makefile fragments required for the dependency tracking to work: rather than attempting to parse the Makefiles via grep and sed trickeries only, we actually invoke 'make' on a slightly preprocessed version of those Makefiles, using a private target that is only meant to bootstrap the required makefile fragments.

• The 'subdir-object' option no longer causes object files corresponding to source files specified with an explicit '$(srcdir)' component to be placed in the source tree rather than in the build tree.

For example, if Makefile.am contains:

        AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS = subdir-objects
        foo_SOURCES = $(srcdir)/foo.c $(srcdir)/s/bar.c $(top_srcdir)/baz.c

then "make all" will create 'foo.o' and 's/bar.o' in $(builddir) rather than in $(srcdir), and will create 'baz.o' in $(top_builddir) rather than in $(top_srcdir).

This was the second part of automake bug#13928.

• Installed 'aclocal' m4 macros can now accept installation directories containing '@' characters (automake bug#20903)

• "./configure && make dist" no longer fails when a distributed file depends on one from BUILT_SOURCES.

• When combining AC_LIBOBJ or AC_FUNC_ALLOCA with the "--disable-dependency-tracking" configure option in an out of source build, the build sub-directory defined by AC_CONFIG_LIBOBJ_DIR is now properly created. (automake bug#27781)

• The time printed by 'mdate-sh' is now using the UTC time zone to support the reproducible build effort. (automake bug#20314)

• The elisp byte-compilation rule now uses byte-compile-dest-file-function, rather than byte-compile-dest-file, which was obsoleted in 2009. We expect that Emacs-26 will continue to support the old function, but will complain loudly, and that Emacs-27 will remove support for it altogether.

• New features added

• A custom testsuite driver for the Guile Scheme SRFI-64 API has been added to the "contrib" section. This allows a more convenient way to test Guile code without having to use low primitives such as exit status. See SRFI-64 API specification for more details: <​https://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-64/srfi-64.html>

[bdubbs@…]

Fixed at revision 11382.