Automake 1.11.2b test release

[Stefano Lattarini]

We are pleased to announce the Automake 1.11.2b test release.

It contains two new minor features (support for the creation of
lzip-compressed distribution archives, and for the new variables
EXTRA_foo_DEPENDENCIES), some new warnings meant to inform the
users about upcoming backward-incompatibilities that will be
introduced in the next major and minor versions, and some bugfixes.

This release is almost backward-compatible with older versions, but
for the fact that some deprecated constructs and usages might now be
flagged when `-Wall' and/or `-Wobsolete' are in use.

See below for the detailed list of changes since automake 1.11.2, as
summarized by the NEWS file.

Download here:

  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.11.2b.tar.gz
  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.11.2b.tar.xz

Please report bugs and problems to <address@hidden>, and send
general comments and feedback to <address@hidden>.

Thanks to everyone who has reported problems, contributed patches,
and helped testing Automake!

-*-*-*-

New in 1.11.2b:

* WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!

  - The support for the "obscure" multilib feature has been deprecated,
    and will be moved out of the automake core in the next major Automake
    release (1.12).

  - The support for ".log -> .html" conversion and the check-html and
    recheck-html targets will be removed in the next major Automake
    release (1.12).

  - The obsolescent AM_WITH_REGEX  macro has been deprecated (since the
    GNU rx library has been decommissioned), and will be removed in the
    next major Automake release (1.12).

  - The `lzma' compression format for distribution archives has been
    deprecated in favor of `xz' and `lzip', and will be removed in the
    next major Automake release (1.12).

* Miscellaneous changes:

  - Automake's own build system is more silent by default, making use of
    the 'silent-rules' option.

  - The master copy of the `gnupload' script is now maintained in gnulib,
    not in automake.

  - The `missing' script don't try to wrap calls to `tar' anymore.

  - "make dist" doesn't wrap `tar' invocations with the `missing' script
    anymore.  Similarly, the obsolescent variable `$(AMTAR)' (which you
    shouldn't be using BTW ;-) does not invoke the missing script anymore
    to wrap tar, but simply invokes the `tar' program itself.

  - "make dist" can now create lzip-compressed tarballs.

  - In the Automake info documentation, the Top node and the nodes about
    the invocation of the automake and aclocal programs have been renamed;
    now, calling "info automake" will open the Top node, while calling
    "info automake-invocation" and "info aclocal-invocation" will access
    the nodes about the invocation of respectively automake and aclocal.

  - Automake is now distributed as a gzip-compressed and an xz-compressed
    tarball.  Previously, bzip2 was used instead of xz.

  - The last relics of Python 1.5 support have been removed from the
    AM_PATH_PYTHON macro.

  - For programs and libraries, automake now detects EXTRA_foo_DEPENDENCIES
    and adds them to the normal list of dependencies, but without
    overwriting the foo_DEPENDENCIES variable, which is normally computed
    by automake.

Bugs fixed in 1.11.2a:

* Bugs introduced by 1.11.2:

  - Automake now correctly recognizes the prefix/primary combination
   `pkglibexec_SCRIPTS' as valid.

  - The parallel-tests harness doesn't trip anymore on sed implementations
    with stricter limits on the length of input lines (problem seen at
    least on Solaris 8).

* Long-standing bugs:

  - The "deleted header file problem" for *.am files is avoided by stub
    rules.  This allows `make' to trigger a rerun of `automake' also if
    some previously needed `.am' file has been removed.

  - The `silent-rules' option now generates working makefiles even
    for the uncommon `make' implementations that do not support the
    nested-variables extension to POSIX 2008.  For such `make'
    implementations, whether a build is silent is determined at
    configure time, and cannot be overridden at make time with
    `make V=0' or `make V=1'.

  - Vala support now works better in VPATH setups.