+ - The serial testsuite harness is no longer reported as "deprecated",
+ but as "discouraged". We have no plan to remove it, nor to make its
+ use cause runtime warnings.
+
+ - The parallel testsuite is no longer reported as "experimental"; it
+ is well tested, and should be stable now.
+
+ - The 'shar' and 'tarZ' distribution formats and the 'dist-shar' and
+ 'dist-tarZ' options are obsolescent, and their use is deprecated
+ in the documentation.
+
+ - Other minor miscellaneous fixes and improvements; in particular,
+ some improvements in cross-references.
+
+* Bugs fixed:
+
+ - When the 'ustar' option is used, the generated configure script no
+ longer risks hanging during the tests for the availability of the
+ 'pax' utility, even if the user running configure has a UID or GID
+ that requires more than 21 bits to be represented.
+ See automake bug#8343 and bug#13588.
+
+ - The obsolete macros AM_CONFIG_HEADER or AM_PROG_CC_STDC work once
+ again, as they did in Automake 1.12.x (albeit printing runtime
+ warnings in the 'obsolete' category). Removing them has turned
+ out to be a very bad idea, because it complicated distro packing
+ enormously. Making them issue fatal warnings, as we did in
+ Automake 1.13, has turned out to be a similarly very bad idea,
+ for exactly the same reason.
+
+ - aclocal will no longer error out if the first local m4 directory
+ (as specified by the '-I' option or the 'AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIRS' or
+ 'AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR' macros) doesn't exist; it will merely report
+ a warning in the 'unsupported' category. This is done to support
+ some pre-existing real-world usages. See automake bug#13514.
+
+ - aclocal will no longer consider directories for extra m4 files more
+ than once, even if they are specified multiple times. This ensures
+ packages that specify both
+
+ AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR([m4]) in configure.ac
+ ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS = -I m4 in Makefile.am
+
+ will work correctly, even when the 'm4' directory contains no
+ package-specific files, but is used only to install third-party
+ m4 files (as can happen with e.g., "libtoolize --install").
+ See automake bug#13514.
+
+ - Analysis of make flags in Automake-generated rules has been made more
+ robust, and more future-proof. For example, in presence of make that
+ (like '-I') take an argument, the characters in said argument will no
+ longer be spuriously considered as a set of additional make options.
+ In particular, automake-generated rules will no longer spuriously
+ believe to be running in dry mode ("make -n") if run with an invocation
+ like "make -I noob"; nor will they believe to be running in keep-going
+ mode ("make -k") if run with an invocation like "make -I kool"
+ (automake bug#12554).
+