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Automake test release 1.13.1b (will become 1.13.2)
From: |
Stefano Lattarini |
Subject: |
Automake test release 1.13.1b (will become 1.13.2) |
Date: |
Wed, 23 Jan 2013 11:42:23 +0100 |
This is the announcement for the GNU Automake 1.13.1b test release.
This is a bug-fixing release. Its main purpose is to re-introduce
some obsolete m4 macros that had been removed too hastily, bringing
woes and problems for distro packagers; see:
<http://www.mail-archive.com/address@hidden/msg52840.html>
<http://blog.flameeyes.eu/2013/01/autotools-mythbuster-automake-pains>
It also offers some minor documentation fixes, and introduces new
runtime (non-fatal!) warnings for a couple of discouraged features
of Texinfo support: use of suffix-less info files, and use of
Texinfo input files with '.txi' or '.texinfo' extensions.
See below for the detailed list of changes since the previous
version, as summarized by the NEWS file.
Download here:
ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.13.1b.tar.gz
ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.13.1b.tar.xz
Release is tentatively planned in about a week; but it won't actually
take place until the distro packagers have confirmed the changes
introduced are good enough to fix the issues they've been seeing.
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 1.13.2:
* WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
- Automake 1.14 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).
- Automake 1.14 will drop support for the long-deprecated 'configure.in'
name for the Autoconf input file. You are advised to start using
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).
- Support for IRIX and the SGI C/C++ compilers will be removed in
Automake 1.14: they have seen their last release in 2006, and SGI
is expected to retire support from them in December 2013; see
<http://www.sgi.com/services/support/irix_mips_support.html> for
more information.
- 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-provided scripts and makefile recipes might (finally!)
start assuming a POSIX shell in Automake 1.14.
- Starting from Automake 1.14, 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').
* 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.
- 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.
* 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
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
use cause runtime warnings.
- The parallel testsuite is no longer reported as "experimental"; it
is well tested, ans 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:
- 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.
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