-New in 1.13.2:
+* WARNING: New versioning scheme for Automake.
+
+ - Beginning with the release 1.13.2, Automake has started to use a
+ more rational versioning scheme, that should allow users to know
+ which kind of changes can be expected from a new version, based
+ on its version number.
+
+ + Micro releases (e.g., 1.13.3, 2.0.1, 3.2.8) introduce only bug
+ and regression fixes and documentation updates; they should not
+ introduce new features, nor any backward-incompatibility (any
+ such incompatibility would be considered a bug, to be fixed with
+ a further micro release).
+
+ + Minor releases (e.g., 1.14, 2.1) can introduce new backward
+ compatible features; the only backward-incompatibilities allowed
+ in such a release are new *non-fatal* deprecations and warnings,
+ and possibly fixes for old or non-trivial bugs (or even inefficient
+ behaviours) that could unfortunately have been seen and used by
+ some as "corner case features". Possible disruptions caused by
+ this kind of fixes should hopefully be quite rare, and their
+ effects limited in scope.
+
+ + Major versions (now expected to be released every 18 or 24 months,
+ and not more often) can introduce new big features (possibly with
+ rough edges and not-fully-stabilized APIs), removal of deprecated
+ features, backward-incompatible changes of behaviour, and possibly
+ major refactorings (that, while ideally transparent to the user,
+ could introduce new bugs). Incompatibilities should however not
+ be introduced gratuitously and abruptly; a proper deprecation path
+ should be duly implemented in the preceding minor releases.
+
+ - According to this new scheme, the next major version of Automake
+ (the one that had previously been labelled as "1.14") will actually
+ become "Automake 2.0". Automake 1.14 is *this* release (which is
+ a minor one). It introduces new features, deprecations and bug
+ fixes, but no serious backward incompatibility. A partial exception
+ is given by the behavioural changes in the AM_PROG_CC_C_O macro
+ (described in details below) but such changes can also be seen as a
+ fix for the old suboptimal and somewhat confusing behaviour.
+
+ - See discussion about automake bug#13578 for more details and
+ background: <http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=13578>
+
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
- - Automake 1.14 will require Autoconf 2.70 or later (which is still
+ - Makefile recipes generated by Automake 2.0 will expect to use an
+ 'rm' program that doesn't complain when called without any non-option
+ argument if the '-f' option is given (so that commands like "rm -f"
+ and "rm -rf" will act as a no-op, instead of raising usage errors).
+ This behavior of 'rm' is very widespread in the wild, and it will be
+ required in the next POSIX version:
+
+ <http://austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=542>
+
+ Accordingly, AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE now expands some shell code that checks
+ that the default 'rm' program in PATH satisfies this requirement,
+ aborting the configure process if this is not the case. For the
+ moment, it's still possible to force the configuration process to
+ succeed even with a broken 'rm', that that will no longer be the case
+ for Automake 2.0.
+
+ - Automake 2.0 will require Autoconf 2.70 or later (which is still
unreleased at the moment of writing, but is planned to be released
- before Automake 1.14 is).
+ before Automake 2.0 is).
- - Automake 1.14 will drop support for the long-deprecated 'configure.in'
+ - Automake 2.0 will drop support for the long-deprecated 'configure.in'
name for the Autoconf input file. You are advised to start using the
recommended name 'configure.ac' instead, ASAP.
- - The ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS special make variable will be fully deprecated
- in Automake 1.14 (where it will raise warnings in the "obsolete"
- category). You are advised to start relying on the new Automake
- support for AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIRS instead (which was introduced in
- Automake 1.13).
+ - The ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS special make variable will be fully deprecated in
+ Automake 2.0: it will raise warnings in the "obsolete" category (but
+ still no hard error of course, for compatibilities with the many, many
+ packages that still relies on that variable). You are advised to
+ start relying on the new Automake support for AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIRS
+ instead (which was introduced in Automake 1.13).
- - Automake 1.14 will remove support for automatic dependency tracking
+ - Automake 2.0 will remove support for automatic dependency tracking
with the SGI C/C++ compilers on IRIX. The SGI depmode has been
reported broken "in the wild" already, and we don't think investing
time in debugging and fixing is worthwhile, especially considering
to retire support for them in December 2013:
<http://www.sgi.com/services/support/irix_mips_support.html>
- - Future versions of Automake might remove support for MS-DOS and
- Windows 95/98/ME (support for them was offered by relying on the
- DJGPP project). Note however that both Cygwin and MSYS/MinGW on
- modern Windows versions will continue to be fully supported.
-
- - Support for the long-deprecated INCLUDES variable will be removed
- altogether in Automake 1.14. The AM_CPPFLAGS variable should be
- used instead.
+ - Automake 2.0 will remove support for MS-DOS and Windows 95/98/ME
+ (support for them was offered by relying on the DJGPP project).
+ Note however that both Cygwin and MSYS/MinGW on modern Windows
+ versions will continue to be fully supported.
- Automake-provided scripts and makefile recipes might (finally!)
- start assuming a POSIX shell in Automake 1.14.
+ start assuming a POSIX shell in Automake 2.0. There still is no
+ certainty about this though: we'd first like to wait and see
+ whether future Autoconf versions will be enhanced to guarantee
+ that such a shell is always found and provided by the checks in
+ ./configure.
- - Starting from Automake 1.14, third-party m4 files located in the
+ - Starting from Automake 2.0, third-party m4 files located in the
system-wide aclocal directory, as well as in any directory listed
in the ACLOCAL_PATH environment variable, will take precedence
over "built-in" Automake macros. For example (assuming Automake
is installed in the /usr/local hierarchy), a definition of the
AM_PROG_VALAC macro found in '/usr/local/share/aclocal/my-vala.m4'
should take precedence over the same-named automake-provided macro
- (defined in '/usr/local/share/aclocal-1.14/vala.m4').
+ (defined in '/usr/local/share/aclocal-2.0/vala.m4').
-* Obsolescent features:
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- - Use of suffix-less info files (that can be specified through the
- '@setfilename' macro in Texinfo input files) is discouraged, and
- its use will raise warnings in the 'obsolete' category.
+New in 1.14:
+
+* C compilation, and the AC_PROG_CC and AM_PROG_CC_C_O macros:
+
+ - The 'compile' script is now unconditionally required for all packages
+ that perform C compilation (if you are using the '--add-missing'
+ option, automake will fetch that script for you, so you shouldn't
+ need any explicit adjustment). This new behaviour is needed to avoid
+ obscure errors when the 'subdir-objects' option is used, and the
+ compiler is an inferior one that doesn't grasp the combined use of
+ both the "-c -o" options; see discussion about automake bug#13378 for
+ more details:
+ <http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=13378#35>
+ <http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=13378#44>
+
+ - The next major Automake version (2.0) will unconditionally activate
+ the 'subdir-objects' option. In order to smooth out the transition,
+ we now give a warning (in the category 'unsupported') whenever a
+ source file is present in a subdirectory but the 'subdir-object' is
+ not enabled. For example, the following usage will trigger such a
+ warning:
+
+ bin_PROGRAMS = sub/foo
+ sub_foo_SOURCES = sub/main.c sub/bar.c
+
+ - Automake will automatically enhance the autoconf-provided macro
+ AC_PROG_CC to force it to check, at configure time, that the
+ C compiler supports the combined use of both the '-c' and '-o'
+ options. The result of this check is saved in the cache variable
+ 'am_cv_prog_cc_c_o', and said result can be overridden by
+ pre-defining that variable.
+
+ - The AM_PROG_CC_C_O macro can still be called, albeit that should no
+ longer be necessary. This macro is now just a thin wrapper around the
+ Automake-enhanced AC_PROG_CC. This means, among the other things,
+ that its behaviour is changed in three ways:
+
+ 1. It no longer invokes the Autoconf-provided AC_PROG_CC_C_O
+ macro behind the scenes.
+
+ 2. It caches the check result in the 'am_cv_prog_cc_c_o' variable,
+ and not in a 'ac_cv_prog_cc_*_c_o' variable whose exact name is
+ dynamically computed only at configure runtime (really!) from
+ the content of the '$CC' variable.
+
+ 3. It no longer automatically AC_DEFINE the C preprocessor
+ symbol 'NO_MINUS_C_MINUS_O'.
+
+* Texinfo support:
+
+ - Automake can now be instructed to place '.info' files generated from
+ Texinfo input in the builddir rather than in the srcdir; this is done
+ specifying the new automake option 'info-in-builddir'. This feature
+ was requested by the developers of GCC, GDB, GNU binutils and the GNU
+ bfd library. See the extensive discussion about automake bug#11034
+ for more details.
+
+ - For quite a long time, Automake has been implementing an undocumented
+ hack which ensured that '.info' files which appeared to be cleaned
+ (by being listed in the CLEANFILES or DISTCLEANFILES variables) were
+ built in the builddir rather than in the srcdir; this hack was
+ introduced to ensure better backward-compatibility with package
+ such as Texinfo, which do things like:
+
+ info_TEXINFOS = texinfo.txi info-stnd.texi info.texi
+ DISTCLEANFILES = texinfo texinfo-* info*.info*
+ # Do not create info files for distribution.
+ dist-info:
+ @:
+
+ in order not to distribute generated '.info' files.
+
+ Now that we have the 'info-in-builddir' option that explicitly causes
+ generated '.info' files to be placed in the builddir, this hack should
+ be longer necessary, so we deprecate it with runtime warnings. It will
+ likely be removed altogether in Automake 2.0.
+
+* Relative directory in Makefile fragments:
+
+ - The special Automake-time substitutions '%reldir%' and '%canon_reldir%'
+ (and their short versions, '%D%' and '%C%' respectively) can now be used
+ in an included Makefile fragment. The former is substituted with the
+ relative directory of the included fragment (compared to the top-level
+ including Makefile), and the latter with the canonicalized version of
+ the same relative directory.
+
+ # in 'Makefile.am':
+ bin_PROGRAMS = # will be updated by included Makefile fragments
+ include src/Makefile.inc
+
+ # in 'src/Makefile.inc':
+ bin_PROGRAMS += %reldir%/foo
+ %canon_reldir%_foo_SOURCES = %reldir%/bar.c
+
+ This should be especially useful for packages using a non-recursive
+ build system.
+
+* Deprecated distribution formats:
+
+ - The 'shar' and 'compress' distribution formats are deprecated, and
+ scheduled for removal in Automake 2.0. Accordingly, the use of the
+ 'dist-shar' and 'dist-tarZ' will cause warnings at automake runtime
+ (in the 'obsolete' category), and the recipes of the Automake-generated
+ targets 'dist-shar' and 'dist-tarZ' will unconditionally display
+ (non-fatal) warnings at make runtime.
+
+* New configure runtime warnings about "rm -f" support:
+
+ - To simplify transition to Automake 2.0, the shell code expanded by
+ AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE now checks (at configure runtime) that the default
+ 'rm' program in PATH doesn't complain when called without any
+ non-option argument if the '-f' option is given (so that commands like
+ "rm -f" and "rm -rf" act as a no-op, instead of raising usage errors).
+ If this is not the case, the configure script is aborted, to call the
+ attention of the user on the issue, and invite him to fix his PATH.
+ The checked 'rm' behavior is very widespread in the wild, and will be
+ required by future POSIX versions:
+
+ <http://austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=542>
+
+ The user can still force the configure process to complete even in the
+ presence of a broken 'rm' by defining the ACCEPT_INFERIOR_RM_PROGRAM
+ environment variable to "yes". And the generated Makefiles should
+ still work correctly even when such broken 'rm' is used. But note
+ that this will no longer be the case with Automake 2.0 though, so, if
+ you encounter the warning, please report it to us ASAP (and try to fix
+ your environment as well).
- - Use of Texinfo input files with '.txi' or '.texinfo' extensions
- is discouraged, and its use will raise warnings in the 'obsolete'
- category. You are advised to simply use the '.texi' extension
- instead.
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+New in 1.13.4:
+
+* Bugs fixed:
+
+ - Fix a minor regression introduced in Automake 1.13.3: when two or more
+ user-defined suffix rules were present in a single Makefile.am,
+ automake would needlessly include definition of some make variables
+ related to C compilation in the generated Makefile.in (bug#14560).
+
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+New in 1.13.3:
+
+* Documentation fixes:
+
+ - The documentation no longer mistakenly reports that the obsolete
+ 'AM_MKDIR_PROG_P' macro and '$(mkdir_p)' make variable are going
+ to be removed in Automake 2.0.
+
+* Bugs fixed:
+
+ - Byte-compilation of Emacs lisp files could fail spuriously on
+ Solaris, when /bin/ksh or /usr/xpg4/bin/sh were used as shell.
+
+ - If the same user-defined suffixes were transformed into different
+ Automake-known suffixes in different Makefile.am files in the same
+ project, automake could get confused and generate inconsistent
+ Makefiles (automake bug#14441).
+ For example, if 'Makefile.am' contained a ".ext.cc:" suffix rule,
+ and 'sub/Makefile.am' contained a ".ext.c:" suffix rule, automake
+ would have mistakenly placed into 'Makefile.in' rules to compile
+ "*.c" files into object files, and into 'sub/Makefile.in' rules to
+ compile "*.cc" files into object files --- rather than the other
+ way around. This is now fixed.
+
+* Testsuite work:
+
+ - The test cases no longer have the executable bit set. This should
+ make it clear that they are not meant to be run directly; as
+ explained in t/README, they can only be run through the custom
+ 'runtest' script, or by a "make check" invocation.
+
+ - The testsuite has seen the introduction of a new helper function
+ 'run_make', and several related changes. These serve a two-fold
+ purpose:
+
+ 1. Remove brittleness due to the use of "make -e" in test cases.
+
+ 2. Seamlessly allow the use of parallel make ("make -j...") in the
+ test cases, even where redirection of make output is involved
+ (see automake bug#11413 for a description of the subtle issues
+ in this area).
+
+ - Several spurious failures have been fixed (they hit especially
+ MinGW/MSYS builds). See automake bugs #14493, #14494, #14495,
+ #14498, #14499, #14500, #14501, #14517 and #14528.
+
+ - Some other minor miscellaneous changes and fixlets.
+
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+New in 1.13.2:
* Documentation fixes:
- The long-deprecated but still supported two-arguments invocation form
of AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE is documented once again. This seems the sanest
- thing to do, given that support for such an usage might need to remain
- in place for a unspecified amount of time in order to cater for people
+ thing to do, given that support for such usage might need to remain
+ in place for an unspecified amount of time in order to cater to people
who want to define the version number for their package dynamically at
configure runtime (unfortunately, Autoconf does not yet support this
scenario, so we cannot delegate the work to it).
- The serial testsuite harness is no longer reported as "deprecated",
- but as "discouraged". We have no plan to remove it, not to make its
+ 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
- Other minor miscellaneous fixes and improvements; in particular,
some improvements in cross-references.
+* Obsolescent features:
+
+ - Use of suffix-less info files (that can be specified through the
+ '@setfilename' macro in Texinfo input files) is discouraged, and
+ its use will raise warnings in the 'obsolete' category. Simply
+ use the '.info' extension for all your info files, transforming
+ usages like:
+
+ @setfilename myprogram
+
+ into:
+
+ @setfilename myprogram.info
+
+ - Use of Texinfo input files with '.txi' or '.texinfo' extensions
+ is discouraged, and its use will raise warnings in the 'obsolete'
+ category. You are advised to simply use the '.texi' extension
+ instead.
+
* 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
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).
+
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
New in 1.13.1:
tar-pax. The new option filename-length-max=99 helps diagnosing
filenames that are too long for tar-v7. (PR/414)
- - Variables aumented with `+=' are now automatically flattened (i.e.,
- trailing backslashes removed) and then wrapped around 80 colummns
+ - Variables augmented with `+=' are now automatically flattened (i.e.,
+ trailing backslashes removed) and then wrapped around 80 columns
(adding trailing backslashes). In previous versions, a long series
of
VAR += value1
projects / platform / upstream / automake.git / blobdiff