GNU Automake 1.9 released

[Alexandre Duret-Lutz]

We're pleased to announce the release of Automake 1.9.

This release contains many bug fixes and improvements, but not as much
as in previous major releases.  The NEWS entry is appended.  Thanks to
all people who have been testing pre-release, reporting bugs,
contributing code, suggesting enhancements, and answering user
questions on the mailing lists.

You can find the new release here:

    ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.9.tar.gz
    ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.9.tar.gz.sig
    ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.9.tar.bz2
    ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.9.tar.bz2.sig
    ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/automake/automake-1.9.tar.gz
    ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/automake/automake-1.9.tar.gz.sig
    ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/automake/automake-1.9.tar.bz2
    ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/automake/automake-1.9.tar.bz2.sig

Soon it will also appear on the sources and GNU mirrors which
are listed here:

    http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html
    http://sources.redhat.com/mirrors.html

Finally, here are the MD5 checksums:

    c0b6434087e3be0606ef9d172238f26c  automake-1.9.tar.bz2
    8398de9b2100d3cb1c94f5cd29166b5d  automake-1.9.tar.gz

Please report bugs by mail to <address@hidden>, or
at http://sources.redhat.com/cgi-bin/gnatsweb.pl?database=automake

New in 1.9:

* Makefile.in bloat reduction:

  - Inference rules are used to compile sources in subdirectories when
    the `subdir-objects' option is used and no per-target flags are
    used.  This should reduce the size of some projects a lot, because
    Automake used to output an explicit rule for each such object in
    the past.

  - Automake no longer outputs three rules (.o, .obj, .lo) for each
    object that must be built with explicit rules.  It just outputs
    the rules required to build the kind of object considered: either
    the two .o and .obj rules for usual objects, or the .lo rule for
    libtool objects.

* Change to Libtool support:

  - Libtool tags are used with libtool versions that support them.
    (I.e., with Libtool 1.5 or greater.)

  - Automake is now able to handle setups where a libtool library is
    conditionally installed in different directories, as in

      if COND
        lib_LTLIBRARIES = liba.la
      else
        pkglib_LTLIBRARIES = liba.la
      endif
      liba_la_SOURCES = ...

* Changes to aclocal:

  - aclocal now ensures that AC_DEFUNs and AU_DEFUNs it discovers are
    really evaluated, before it decides to include them in aclocal.m4.
    This solves nasty problems with conditional redefinitions of
    Autoconf macros in /usr/share/aclocal/*.m4 files causing extraneous
    *.m4 files to be included in any project using these macros.
    (Calls to AC_PROG_EGREP causing libtool.m4 to be included is the
    most famous instance of this bug.)

  - Do not complain about missing conditionally AC_REQUIREd macros
    that are not actually used.  In 1.8.x aclocal would correctly
    determine which of these macros were really needed (and include
    only these in the package); unfortunately it would also require
    all of them to be present in order to run.  This created
    situations were aclocal would not work on a tarball distributing
    all the macros it uses.  For instance running aclocal on a project
    containing only the subset of the Gettext macros in use by the
    project did not work, because gettext conditionally requires other
    macros.

* Portability improvements:

  - Tar format can be chosen with the new options tar-v7, tar-ustar, and
    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
    (adding trailing backslashes).  In previous versions, a long series
    of
      VAR += value1
      VAR += value2
      VAR += value3
      ...
    would result in a single-line definition of VAR that could possibly
    exceed the maximum line length of some make implementations.

    Non-augmented variables are still output as they are defined in
    the Makefile.am.

* Miscellaneous:

  - Support Fortran 90/95 with the new "fc" and "ppfc" languages.
    Works the same as the old Fortran 77 implementation; just replace
    F77 with FC everywhere (exception: FFLAGS becomes FCFLAGS).
    Requires a version of autoconf which provides AC_PROG_FC (>=2.59).

  - Support for conditional _LISP.

  - Support for conditional -hook and -local rules (PR/428).

  - Diagnose AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR calls following AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE. (PR/49)

  - Automake will not write any Makefile.ins after the first error it
    encounters.  The previous Makefile.ins (if any) will be left in
    place.  (Warnings will not prevent output, but remember they can
    be turned into errors with -Werror.)

  - The restriction that SUBDIRS must contain direct children is gone.
    Do not abuse.

  - The manual tells more about SUBDIRS vs. DIST_SUBDIRS.
    It also gives an example of nested packages using AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS.

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