Merge branch 'maint' into msvc

Merge branch 'maint' into msvc

* maint: (56 commits)
  tests: fix failure due to debugging code forgotten into a test
  tests: avoid spurious failure of libtool and gettext tests
  hacking: distribute it, and mention it in the ChangeLog
  regex: deprecate the obsolete macro AM_WITH_REGEX
  maint: distribute .xz tarballs, not .bz2 ones
  maint: better use of autoconf 2.68 features
  cosmetics: use proper m4 quoting in configure.ac
  include: avoid "deleted .am file" problem
  tests: better handling of gettext and libtool requirements
  fix: typos and grammaros in comments of the new test
  tests: report useful system information in 'test-suite.log'
  python: remove relics for Python 1.5 support
  configure: remove extraneous 'eval's from AM_RUN_LOG invocations
  configure: report TeX version in config.log
  maint: snapshots from `maint' are still development snapshots
  configure: print proper message for test releases
  devel: help in comparing Makefile.in from different commits
  repo: don't commit generated files in the git repository anymore
  maint: remove executable bit from automake.in
  missing: don't try to re-run tar with a munged command line
  ...