automake-1.19

[Bruce Dubbs]

New minor version.

[Bruce Dubbs]

New in 1.19 (2026-09-10):

• New features added

• New autoconf macro AM_OPTIONAL_AUTOMAKE. It takes a list of `dist-XXX' option names (dist-bzip2, dist-bzip3, dist-xz, dist-lzip, dist-zstd, dist-zip, dist-shar, dist-tarZ); `make dist' builds each archive when its tool is available and skips it otherwise, without making `make dist' fail. This is for systems that intentionally lack some compression tools.

• Bugs fixed

• Recognize COPYINGv2, COPYINGv3, COPYING.LESSERv2 and COPYING.LESSERv3 as license files; distribute them automatically, similarly to COPYING. This improves compatibility with other GNU projects, notably GNU GMP.

• `make dist' no longer propagates its internal distribution-directory cleanup override to recursive makes run while constructing distdir. The override could make a nested `make distcheck' leave its distribution directory behind and then fail its distclean check.

• `make dist-bzip2 dist-xz' now succeeds. They share the intermediate uncompressed tarball as a result of another fix. The first goal used to delete it, so every later goal failed with ENOENT. Under GNU make the tarball is now an .INTERMEDIATE file, built once and removed once the last goal is done with it; other make implementations rebuild it per goal.

• Non-zero exit codes of compressors for the dist tarballs no longer abort the job in a state where the empty files are left behind. The shell redirection truncates the archive before the initial invocation, so a zero-length archive could be mistaken for a distribution; $(distdir).tar was left too. Both are now removed.

• Busybox tar no longer assumed to be GNU tar just because it supports --version.

• `make dist' now fails when tar fails, instead of exiting successfully with a truncated archive.

• The filename-length-max=N option no longer rejects file names of exactly N characters; as documented, only longer ones are.

• The manual no longer presents 99 characters as the portable limit for file names in any archive format: it is the limit of the v7 format, whereas ustar, the default as of Automake 1.18, stores longer names.

• A file that is not currently present is still a part of the distribution if a `Makefile.am' rule can build it. When that rule is inside an Automake conditional, the file is distributed only when the condition is true.

• The `check-DEJAGNU' recipe now honors silent rules (in the non-V=1 scenario).

• Objective C and Objective C++ sources built with Libtool are now compiled and linked with --tag=OBJC' and --tag=OBJCXX', when the installed Libtool announces support for those tags (Libtool 2.6.0 and newer).

[Bruce Dubbs]

Fixed at commit 9a4ceea7b.