5 - The NEWS file is more verbose.
9 - Autoconf 2.57b or greater is required.
13 - AR's `cru' flags are now set in a global ARFLAGS variable instead
14 of being hard-coded in each $(AR) invocation, so they can be
15 substituted from configure.ac. This has been requested by people
16 dealing with non-POSIX ar implementations.
18 - New warning option: -Woverride. This will warn about any user
19 target or variable definitions which override Automake
22 - Texinfo rules back up and restore info files when makeinfo fails.
24 - Texinfo rules now support the `html' target.
25 Running this requires Texinfo 4.0 or greater.
27 `html' is a new recursive target, so if your package mixes
28 hand-crafted `Makefile.in's with Automake-generated
29 `Makefile.in's, you should adjust the former to support (or
30 ignore) this target so that `make html' recurses successfully. If
31 you had a custom `html' rule in your `Makefile.am', it's better to
32 rename it as `html-local', otherwise your rule will override
33 Automake's new rule (you can check that by running `automake
34 -Woverride') and that will stop the recursion to subdirectories.
36 Last but not least, this `html' rule is declared PHONY, even when
37 overridden. Fortunately, it appears that few packages use a
38 non-PHONY `html' rule.
40 - Any file which is m4_included from configure.ac will appear as a
41 configure and Makefile.in dependency, and will be automatically
44 - The rules for rebuilding Makefiles and Makefile.ins will now
45 rebuild all Makefiles and all Makefile.ins at once when one of
46 configure's dependencies has changed. This is considerably faster
47 than previous implementations, where config.status and automake
48 were run separately in each directory (this still happens when you
49 change a Makefile.am locally, without touching configure.ac or
50 friends). Doing this also solves a longstanding issue: these
51 rebuild rules failed to work when adding new directories to the
52 tree, forcing you to run automake manually.
54 - For similar reasons, the rules to rebuild configure,
55 config.status, and aclocal.m4 are now defined in all directories.
56 Note that if you were using the CONFIG_STATUS_DEPENDENCIES and
57 CONFIGURE_DEPENDENCIES (undocumented) variables, you should better
58 define them in all directories. This is easily done using an
61 - aclocal will now use `m4_include' instead of copying local m4
62 files into aclocal.m4. (Local m4 files are those you ship with
63 your project, other files will be copied as usual.)
65 Because m4_included files are automatically distributed, it means
66 for most projects there is no point in EXTRA_DISTing the list of
67 m4 files which are used. (You can probably get rid of
68 m4/Makefile.am if you had one.)
70 - aclocal will avoid touching aclocal.m4 when possible, so that
71 Autom4te's cache isn't needlessly invalidated. This behavior can
72 be switched off with the new `--force' option.
74 - aclocal now uses Autoconf's --trace to detect macros which are actually
75 used and will no longer include unused macros simply because they
76 where mentioned. This was often the case for macros called
79 - New option no-dist-gzip.
81 - install-sh now understands --version and --help.
83 - Automake will now recognize AC_CONFIG_LINKS so far as removing created
84 links as part of the distclean target and including source files in
87 - AM_PATH_PYTHON now support ACTION-IF-FOUND and ACTION-IF-NOT-FOUND
88 argument. The latter can be used to override the default behavior
91 - Automake will exit with $? = 63 on version mismatch. (So does
92 Autoconf 2.58) missing knows this, and in this case it will
93 emulate the tools as if they were absent. Because older versions
94 of Automake and Autoconf did not use this exit code, this change
95 will only be useful in projects generated with future versions of
98 - When using AC_CONFIG_FILES with multiple input files, Automake
99 generates the first ".in" input file for which a ".am" exists.
100 (Former versions would try to use only the first of the input
105 - lisp_DATA is now allowed. If you are using the empty ELCFILES
106 idiom to disable byte-compilation of lisp_LISP files, it is
107 recommended that you switch to using lisp_DATA. ELCFILES is no
110 - AM_PROG_CC_STDC is now empty. The content of this macro was
111 merged in AC_PROG_CC. If your code uses $am_cv_prog_cc_stdc, you
112 should adjust it to use $ac_cv_prog_cc_stdc instead. (This
113 renaming should be safe, even if you have to support several,
114 versions of Automake, because AC_PROG_CC defines this variable
115 since Autoconf 2.54.)
117 - Some users where using the undocumented ACLOCAL_M4_SOURCES
118 variable to override the aclocal.m4 dependencies computed
119 (inaccurately) by older versions of Automake. Because Automake
120 now tracks configure's m4 dependencies accurately (see m4_include
121 above), the use of ACLOCAL_M4_SOURCES should be considered
122 obsolete and will be flagged as such when running `automake
127 - Defining programs conditionally using Automake conditionals no
128 longer leads to a combinatorial explosion. The following
129 construct used to be troublesome when used with dozens of
144 Likewise for _SOURCES, _LDADD, and _LIBADD variables.
146 - Automake now supports bin_PROGRAMS (or any *_PROGRAMS variable)
147 being defined in several conditions. As in
156 Likewise for _SOURCES, _LDADD, and _LIBADD variables.
158 - Cleanup the definitions of $(distdir) and $(top_distdir).
159 $(top_distdir) now points to the root of the distribution
160 directory created during `make dist', as it did in Automake 1.4,
161 not to the root of the build tree as it did in intervening
162 versions. Furthermore these two variables are now only defined in
163 the top level Makefile, and passed to sub-directories when running
166 - The --no-force option now correctly checks the Makefile.in's
167 dependencies before deciding not to update it.
171 - The Automake manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
173 - Targets dist-gzip, dist-bzip2, dist-tarZ, dist-zip are always defined.
175 - core dumps are no longer removed by the cleaning rules. There are
176 at least three reasons for this:
177 1. These files should not be created by any build step,
178 so their removal do not fit any of the cleaning rules.
179 Actually, they may be precious to the developer.
180 2. If such file is created during a build, then it's clearly a
181 bug Automake should not hide. Not removing the file will
182 cause `make distcheck' to complain about its presence.
183 3. Operating systems have different naming conventions for
184 core dump files. A core file on one system might be a
185 completely legitimate data file on another system.
189 * Autoconf 2.54 is required.
190 * `aclocal' and `automake' will no longer warn about obsolete
191 configure macros. This is done by `autoconf -Wobsolete'.
192 * AM_CONFIG_HEADER, AM_SYS_POSIX_TERMIOS and
193 AM_HEADER_TIOCGWINSZ_NEEDS_SYS_IOCTL are obsolete (although still
194 supported). You should use AC_CONFIG_HEADERS, AC_SYS_POSIX_TERMIOS,
195 and AC_HEADER_TIOCGWINSZ instead. `autoupdate' can upgrade
196 `configure.ac' for you.
197 * Support for per-program and per-library `_CPPFLAGS'.
198 * New `ctags' target (builds CTAGS files).
199 * Support for -Wmumble and -Wno-mumble, where mumble is a warning category
200 (see `automake --help' or the manual for a list of them).
201 * Honor the WARNINGS environment variable.
202 * Omit the call to depcomp when using gcc3: call the compiler directly.
203 * A new option, std-options, tests that programs support --help and --version
204 when `make installcheck' is run. This is enabled by --gnits.
205 * Texinfo rules now support the `ps' and `pdf' targets.
206 * Info files are now created in the build directory, not the source directory.
207 * info_TEXINFOS supports files in subdirectories (this requires Texinfo 4.1
209 * `make distcheck' will enforce DESTDIR support by attempting
211 * `+=' can be used in conditionals, even if the augmented variable
212 was defined for another condition.
213 * Makefile fragments (inserted with `include') are always distributed.
214 * Use Autoconf's --trace interface to inspect configure.ac and get
215 a more accurate view of it.
216 * Add support for extending aclocal's default macro search path
217 using a `dirlist' file within the aclocal directory.
218 * automake --output-dir is deprecated.
219 * The part of the distcheck target that checks whether uninstall actually
220 removes all installed files has been moved in a separate target,
221 distuninstallcheck, so it can be overridden easily.
225 * Autoconf 2.52 is required.
226 * automake no longer run libtoolize.
227 This is the job of autoreconf (from GNU Autoconf).
228 * `dist' generates all the archive flavors, as did `dist-all'.
229 * `dist-gzip' generates the Gzip tar file only.
230 * Combining Automake Makefile conditionals no longer lead to a combinatorial
231 explosion. Makefile.in's keep a reasonable size.
232 * AM_FUNC_ERROR_AT_LINE, AM_FUNC_STRTOD, AM_FUNC_OBSTACK, AM_PTRDIFF_T
233 are no longer shipped, since Autoconf 2.52 provides them (both as AM_
235 * `#line' of Lex and Yacc files are properly set.
236 * EXTRA_DIST can contain generated directories.
237 * Support for dot-less extensions in suffix rules.
238 * The part of the distcheck target that checks whether distclean actually
239 cleans all built files has been moved in a separate target, distcleancheck,
240 so it can be overridden easily.
241 * `make distcheck' will pass additional options defined in
242 $(DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS) to configure.
243 * Fixed CDPATH portability problems, in particular for MacOS X.
244 * Fixed handling of nobase_ targets.
245 * Fixed support of implicit rules leading to .lo objects.
246 * Fixed late inclusion of --add-missing files (e.g. depcomp) in DIST_COMMON
247 * Added uninstall-hook target
248 * `AC_INIT AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE(tarname,version)' is an obsolete construct.
249 You can now use `AC_INIT(pkgname,version) AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE' instead.
250 (Note that "pkgname" is not "tarname", see the manual for details.)
251 It is also possible to pass a list of global Automake options as
252 first argument to this new form of AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE.
253 * Compiler-based assembler is now called `CCAS'; people expected `AS'
254 to be a real assembler.
255 * AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE will set STRIP itself when it needs it. Adding
256 AC_CHECK_TOOL([STRIP], [strip]) manually is no longer required.
257 * aclocal and automake are also installed with the version number
258 appended, and some of the install directory names have changed.
259 This lets you have multiple versions installed simultaneously.
260 * Support for parsers and lexers in subdirectories.
263 * Support for `configure.ac'.
264 * Support for `else COND', `endif COND' and negated conditions `!COND'.
265 * `make dist-all' is much faster.
266 * Allows '@' AC_SUBSTs in macro names.
267 * Faster AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE (requires update of `missing' script)
268 * User-side dependency tracking. Developers no longer need GNU make
270 * Uses DIST_SUBDIRS in some situations when SUBDIRS is conditional
271 * Most files are correctly handled if they appear in subdirs
272 For instance, a _DATA file can appear in a subdir
273 * GNU tar is no longer required for `make dist'
274 * Added support for `dist_' and `nodist_' prefixes
275 * Added support for `nobase_' prefix
276 * Compiled Java support
277 * Support for per-executable and per-library compilation flags
281 * Added support for the Fortran 77 programming language.
282 * Re-indexed the Automake Texinfo manual.
283 * Added `AM_FOOFLAGS' variable for each compiler invocation;
284 e.g. AM_CFLAGS can be used in Makefile.am to set C compiler flags
285 * Support for latest autoconf, including support for objext
286 * Can now put `.' in SUBDIRS to control build order
287 * `include' command and `+=' support for macro assignment
288 * Dependency tracking no long susceptible to deleted header file problem
289 * Maintainer mode now a conditional. @MAINT@ is now an anachronism.
294 * Better Cygwin32 support
295 * Support for suffix rules with _SOURCES variables
296 * New options `readme-alpha' and `check-news'; Gnits mode sets these
297 * @LEXLIB@ no longer required when lex source seen
298 Lex support in `missing', and new lex macro. Update your missing script.
299 * Built-in support for assembly
300 * aclocal gives error if `AM_' macro not found
301 * Passed YFLAGS, not YACCFLAGS, to yacc
302 * AM_PROG_CC_STDC does not have to come before AC_PROG_CPP
303 * Dependencies computed as a side effect of compilation
304 * Preliminary support for Java
305 * DESTDIR support at "make install" time
306 * Improved ansi2knr support; you must use the latest ansi2knr.c (included)
310 * Better DejaGnu support
311 * Added no-installinfo option
312 * Added Emacs Lisp support
313 * Added --no-force option
314 * Included `aclocal' program
315 * Automake will now generate rules to regenerate aclocal.m4, if appropriate
316 * Now uses `AM_' macro names everywhere
317 * ansi2knr option can have directory prefix (eg `../lib/ansi2knr')
318 ansi2knr now works correctly on K&R sources
319 * Better C++, yacc, lex support
320 * Will compute _DEPENDENCIES variables automatically if not supplied
321 * Will interpolate $(...) and ${...} when examining contents of a variable
322 * .deps files now in build directory, not source directory; dependency
323 handling generally rewritten
324 * DATA, MANS and BUILT_SOURCES no longer included in distribution
325 * can now put config.h into a subdir
326 * Added dist-all target
327 * Support for install-info program (see texinfo 3.9)
328 * Support for "yacc -d"
329 * configure substitutions are automatically discovered and included
330 in generated Makefile.in
331 * Special --cygnus mode
332 * OMIT_DEPENDENCIES can now hold list of dependencies to be omitted
333 when making distribution. Some dependencies are auto-ignored.
334 * Changed how libraries are specified in _LIBRARIES variable
335 * Full libtool support, from Gord Matzigkeit
336 * No longer have to explicitly touch stamp-h when using AC_CONFIG_HEADER;
337 AM_CONFIG_HEADER handles it automatically
338 * Texinfo output files no longer need .info extension
339 * Added `missing' support
341 * Conditionals in Makefile.am, from Ian Taylor
345 * distcheck target runs install and installcheck targets
346 * Added preliminary support for DejaGnu.
351 * More libtool fixes from Gord Matzigkeit; libtool support is still
353 * Added support for jm_MAINTAINER_MODE
355 * New "distcheck" target
359 * mkinstalldirs and mdate-sh now appear in directory specified by
361 * Removed DIST_SUBDIRS, DIST_OTHER
362 * AC_ARG_PROGRAM only required when an actual program exists
363 * dist-hook target now run before distribution packaged up; idea from
364 Dieter Baron. Other hooks exist, too.
365 * Preliminary (unfinished) support for libtool
366 * Added short option names.
367 * Better "dist" support when gluing together multiple packages
371 * Documentation updates (many from François Pinard)
372 * strictness `normal' now renamed to `foreign'
373 * Renamed --install-missing to --add-missing
374 * Now handles AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR
375 * Now handles TESTS macro
376 * DIST_OTHER renamed to EXTRA_DIST
377 * DIST_SUBDIRS is deprecated
378 * @ALLOCA@ and @LIBOBJS@ now work in _LDADD variables
379 * Better error messages in many cases
380 * Program names are canonicalized
381 * Added "check" prefix; from Gord Matzigkeit
385 * configure.in scanner knows about AC_PATH_XTRA, AC_OUTPUT ":" syntax
386 * Beginnings of a test suite
387 * Automatically adds -I options for $(srcdir), ".", and path to config.h
388 * Doesn't print anything when running
389 * Beginnings of MAINT_CHARSET support
390 * Can specify version in AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS
391 * Most errors recognizable by Emacs' M-x next-error
392 * Added --verbose option
393 * All "primary" variables now obsolete; use EXTRA_PRIMARY to supply
394 configure-generated names
395 * Required macros now distributed in aclocal.m4
397 * --strictness=gnu is default
401 * More sophisticated configure.in scanning; now understands ALLOCA and
402 LIBOBJS directly, handles AC_CONFIG_HEADER more precisely, etc.
403 * TEXINFOS and MANS now obsolete; use info_TEXINFOS and man_MANS instead.
404 * CONFIG_HEADER variable now obsolete
405 * Can handle multiple Texinfo sources
406 * Allow hierarchies deeper than 2. From Gord Matzigkeit.
407 * HEADERS variable no longer needed; now can put .h files directly into
408 foo_SOURCES variable.
409 * Automake automatically rebuilds files listed in AC_OUTPUT. The
410 corresponding ".in" files are included in the distribution.
413 * Added --gnu and --gnits options
414 * More standards checking
416 * Cleaned up 'dist' targets
417 * Added AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS variable and several options
418 * Now scans configure.in to get some information (preliminary)
421 * Works with Perl 4 again
424 * Added --install-missing option.
425 * Pretty-prints generated macros and rules
426 * Comments in Makefile.am are placed more intelligently in Makefile.in
427 * Generates .PHONY target
428 * Rule or macro in Makefile.am now overrides contents of Automake file
429 * Substantial cleanups from François Pinard
433 * Works with Perl 4 again.
436 * New uniform naming scheme.
437 * --strictness option
439 * '.c' files corresponding to '.y' or '.l' files are automatically
441 * Many bug fixes and cleanups
444 * Allow objects to be conditionally included in libraries via lib_LIBADD.
447 * Bug fixes in 'clean' code.
448 * Now generates 'installdirs' target.
449 * man page installation reworked.
450 * 'make dist' no longer re-creates all Makefile.in's.
453 * Reimplemented in Perl
454 * Added --amdir option (for debugging)
455 * Texinfo support cleaned up.
456 * Automatic de-ANSI-fication cleaned up.
457 * Cleaned up 'clean' targets.
460 * Automatic dependency tracking
462 * New variables DATA and PACKAGEDATA
463 * SCRIPTS installed using $(INSTALL_SCRIPT)
464 * No longer uses double-colon rules
466 * Changes in advance of internationalization
470 Copyright (C) 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003
471 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
473 This file is part of GNU Automake.
475 GNU Automake is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
476 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
477 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
480 GNU Automake is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
481 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
482 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
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485 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
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487 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330,
488 Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.