GNU Autoconf 2.68 released [stable]

[Eric Blake]

The GNU Autoconf team is pleased to announce the stable release of
Autoconf 2.67.  Autoconf is an extensible package of M4 macros that
produce shell scripts to automatically configure software source code
packages.  These scripts can adapt the packages to many kinds of
UNIX-like systems without manual user intervention.  Autoconf creates a
configuration script for a package from a template file that lists the
operating system features that the package can use, in the form of M4
macro calls.

This release fixes a few regressions introduced in previous releases,
and is primarily focused on bug fixes.  It also includes a few new
features, documented below.

Here are the compressed sources:
  http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/autoconf/autoconf-2.68.tar.gz   (1.8MB)
  http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/autoconf/autoconf-2.68.tar.bz2   (1.4MB)
  http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/autoconf/autoconf-2.68.tar.xz   (1.2MB)

Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]:
  http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/autoconf/autoconf-2.68.tar.gz.sig
  http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/autoconf/autoconf-2.68.tar.bz2.sig
  http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/autoconf/autoconf-2.68.tar.xz.sig

To reduce load on the main server, use a mirror listed at:
  http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

[*] You can use either of the above signature files to verify that
the corresponding file (without the .sig suffix) is intact.  First,
be sure to download both the .sig file and the corresponding tarball.
Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify autoconf-2.68.tar.gz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 2527436A

and rerun the `gpg --verify' command.

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Automake 1.11.1

./NEWS

* Noteworthy changes in release 2.68 (2010-09-22) [stable]
  Released by Eric Blake, based on git versions 2.67.*.

** AC_MSG_ERROR (and AS_ERROR) can once again be followed immediately by
   `dnl'.  Regression introduced in 2.66.

** AC_INIT again allows URLs with '?' for its BUG-REPORT argument.
   Regression introduced in 2.66.

** AC_REPLACE_FUNCS again allows a non-literal argument, such as a shell
   variable that expands to a list of functions to check.  Regression
   introduced in 2.66.

** AT_BANNER() with empty argument will cause visual separation from 
previous
   test category.

** The macros AC_PREPROC_IFELSE, AC_COMPILE_IFELSE, AC_LINK_IFELSE, and
   AC_RUN_IFELSE now warn if the first argument failed to use
   AC_LANG_SOURCE or AC_LANG_PROGRAM to generate the conftest file
   contents.  A new macro AC_LANG_DEFINES_PROVIDED exists if you have
   a compelling reason why you cannot use AC_LANG_SOURCE but must
   avoid the warning.

** The macro m4_define_default is now documented.

** Symlinked config.cache files are supported; configure now tries to
   update non-symlinked cache files atomically, so that concurrent 
configure
   runs do not leave behind broken cache files.  It is still unspecified
   which subset or union of results is cached though.

** Autotest testsuites should not contain long text lines any more, and be
   portable even when very many test groups are used.

** AT_CHECK semantics with respect to the Autotest variable $at_status and
   shell execution environment of the arguments are documented now.

** AC_FC_LIBRARY_LDFLAGS now tolerates output from newer gfortran.

** Newly obsolete macros
   The following macros have been marked obsolete.  New programs
   should use the corresponding Gnulib modules.  Gnulib not only
   detects a larger set of portability problems with these functions,
   but also provides complete workarounds.

     AC_FUNC_ERROR_AT_LINE  AC_FUNC_LSTAT_FOLLOWS_SLASHED_SYMLINK
     AC_FUNC_MKTIME  AC_FUNC_STRTOD

--
Eric Blake, on behalf of
The GNU Autoconf team