Autoconf 2.62 released

[Eric Blake]

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The GNU Autoconf team is pleased to announce the release of stable
Autoconf 2.62.  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 provides updates that match practices of modern porting
targets (a full list of changes from 2.61 is listed below).  It includes a
number of improvements to the m4sugar language which result in faster
execution of autoconf.  It also includes improvements for faster execution
of the generated scripts, such as a much heavier reliance on awk.
Likewise, the autotest language now builds testsuites that depend on shell
functions for faster and more compact operation.  To use autoconf, you
must now install GNU M4 1.4.5 or later (we recommend M4 1.4.11 or later);
however, scripts generated by autoconf do not depend on m4.

This version of Autoconf uses GPLv2+ plus an exception for its installed
executables, as described in COPYING; the exception covers the
implications of including an autoconf-generated script in your project.
Meanwhile, several source files within the Autoconf project are under
GPLv3+, as described in COPYINGv3; these files are used for building
and installing Autoconf, but are not present in the installed
programs.  The entire Autoconf project will move to GPLv3+ when the
exception statements have been reformulated in terms of the Additional
Permissions as described in section 7 of GPLv3.

Please report any problems to the address@hidden mailing list.  In
particular, if 'make check' fails, attaching the resulting file
tests/testsuite.log is an integral part of a good bug report.

Here are the compressed sources:
~  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.62.tar.gz   (1.5MB)
~  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.62.tar.bz2   (1.2MB)
~  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.62.tar.lzma   (0.9MB)

Here are the xdelta diffs (useful? if so, please tell address@hidden):
~  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.61-2.62.xdelta   (256KB)

Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]:
~  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.62.tar.gz.sig
~  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.62.tar.bz2.sig
~  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.62.tar.lzma.sig

Here are the MD5 and SHA1 checksums:

6c1f3b3734999035d77da5024aab4fbd  autoconf-2.62.tar.gz
e1fb8fe0b22e651240afdfa2be537a3c  autoconf-2.62.tar.bz2
9a72634a023ebdf3186e8fd50901abb7  autoconf-2.62.tar.lzma
76ac01a00990899736dd3fdcea3332b6  autoconf-2.61-2.62.xdelta
74b2fcffb32b16d248103f42111284331d7bab75  autoconf-2.62.tar.gz
de2b6f57da07427794c56e25844e31f35fc46755  autoconf-2.62.tar.bz2
bc0e1c0b5e0d967df7e19fc1f3793e6cc6c5b445  autoconf-2.62.tar.lzma
d279b04ddd5f1a64e06a697a1fcfbd23a39cf962  autoconf-2.61-2.62.xdelta

[*] 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-2.62.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 wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys F4850180

and rerun the `gpg --verify' command.

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
~  Automake 1.10.1

./NEWS

* Major changes in Autoconf 2.62 (2008-04-05) [stable]
~  Released by Eric Blake, based on git versions 2.61a.*.

** Many optimizations have been applied to make overall execution faster.

** Autotest now makes use of shell functions.

** config.status now uses awk instead of sed also for config headers.

~   - As a side effect, AC_DEFINE and AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED now handle multi-line
~     values, i.e., backslash-newline combinations are handled correctly.
~     Further, for config headers, the total size of values is not limited by
~     the POSIX length limit of text lines any more, only each single line.

** New config variable `top_build_prefix'.

** New Autoconf macros:
~   AC_AUTOCONF_VERSION  AC_OPENMP  AC_PATH_PROGS_FEATURE_CHECK

** AC_C_BIGENDIAN now supports universal binaries a la Mac OS X.

** AC_C_RESTRICT now prefers to #define 'restrict' to a variant spelling
~   like '__restrict' if the variant spelling is available, as this is
~   more likely to work when mixing C and C++ code.

** AC_CHECK_ALIGNOF's type argument T is now documented better: it must
~   be a string of tokens such that "T y;" is a valid member declaration
~   in a struct.

** AC_CHECK_SIZEOF now accepts objects as well as types: the general rule
~   is that sizeof (X) works, then AC_CHECK_SIZEOF (X) should work.

** AC_CHECK_TYPE and AC_CHECK_TYPES now work on any C type-name; formerly,
~   they did not work for function types.  In C++, they now work on any
~   type-id that can be the operand of sizeof; this is similar to C,
~   except it excludes anonymous struct and union types.  Formerly,
~   some (but not all) C++ types involving anonymous struct and union
~   were accepted, though this was not documented.

** AC_CONFIG_LINKS now prefers to link against files in the build tree
~   if found, and it works to link against a file of the same name in
~   the source tree, even if both trees coincide.

** AC_INIT no longer alters $@; regression introduced in 2.60.

** AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS now defines _ALL_SOURCE for Interix platforms.

** AS_HELP_STRING no longer underquotes its first argument; it also handles
~   the case where the first argument contains single-quoted commas.
~   For example, "AS_HELP_STRING([-a, [--arg[=foo]]], [bar])" produces:
~     "  -a, --arg[=foo]         bar"
~   Additionally, the macro now takes two additional arguments,
~   indent-column and wrap-column; these should not normally be needed,
~   but can be used to fine-tune how the output text is wrapped.

** AC_PROG_INSTALL now requires an install program that can install multiple
~   files into a target directory.

** The command 'autoconf -' now correctly processes a file from stdin.

** 'autoreconf -m' now honors $MAKE.

** For all of the directory arguments for 'configure', such as '--prefix'
~   or '--bindir', trailing slashes are stripped.  As an example, if
~   tab completion in the user's shell appends trailing slashes, the
~   command './configure --prefix=/usr/' will still result in an
~   expanded libdir value of /usr/lib, not /usr//lib.

** `configure --help=recursive' now works in read-only trees and from
~   unconfigured build trees.

** If precious variables differ only in whitespace, then the cache consistency
~   check warns instead of fails, and reuses the old value.

** AT_BANNER is now documented.

** AT_SETUP now handles macro expansions properly when calculating line
~   length.

** Autotest now determines $srcdir correctly.

** Testsuites built by autotest now accept a -C/--directory=DIR option
~   to adjust the working directory prior to creating files.

** Autoconf now requires GNU M4 1.4.5 or later.  Earlier versions of M4 have
~   a bug in macro tracing that interferes with the interaction between
~   Autoconf and Automake.  GNU M4 1.4.11 or later is recommended.  The
~   configure search for a working M4 is improved.

** For portability with the eventual M4 2.0, macros should no longer use
~   anything larger than $9 to refer to arguments.

** Documentation for m4sugar is improved.

~   - The following macros were previously available as undocumented
~     interfaces; the macros are now documented as stable interfaces.

~     __oline__  m4_assert  m4_bmatch  m4_bpatsubsts  m4_car  m4_case
~     m4_cdr  m4_default  m4_divert_once  m4_divert_pop  m4_divert_push
~     m4_divert_text  m4_do  m4_errprintn  m4_fatal  m4_flatten
~     m4_ifndef  m4_ifset  m4_ifval  m4_ifvaln  m4_location
~     m4_n  m4_shiftn  m4_strip  m4_warn

~   - The following macros were previously available as undocumented
~     interfaces, but had bug fixes or semantic changes as part of this
~     release.  Packages that relied on the undocumented behavior
~     should be analyzed to make sure they will still work with the
~     new documented behavior.

~     m4_cmp  m4_list_cmp  m4_join  m4_map  m4_map_sep  m4_sign
~     m4_text_box  m4_text_wrap  m4_version_compare

~   - The m4_wrap macro used to have unspecified order, but now
~     guarantees FIFO order.  m4_wrap_lifo was added to guarantee LIFO
~     order.

~   - Packages using the undocumented m4sugar macro m4_PACKAGE_VERSION
~     should consider using the new AC_AUTOCONF_VERSION instead.

~   - m4sugar macros that are not documented in the manual are still
~     deemed experimental, and should not be used outside of Autoconf.

** The m4sugar macros m4_append and m4_append_uniq, first documented in
~   2.60, have been fixed to treat both the string and the separator
~   arguments consistently with regards to quoting.  Prior to this fix,
~   m4_append_uniq could mistakenly duplicate entries if the expansion
~   of the separator resulted in a different string (for example, if it
~   contained quotes, a comma, or a macro name).  However, it means
~   that programs previously using
~     m4_append([name], [string], [[, ]])
~   are now using a four-character separator instead of the intended
~   comma and space.  If you need portability to earlier versions of
~   Autoconf, you can insert the following snippet after AC_INIT but
~   before any other macro expansions, to enforce the new semantics:
~     m4_pushdef([m4_append], [m4_define([$1],
           m4_ifdef([$1], [m4_defn([$1])[$3]])[$2])])
~   Additionally, m4_append_uniq now takes optional parameters that can
~   be used to take action depending on whether anything was appended,
~   and warns if a non-empty separator occurs within the string being
~   appended, since that can lead to duplicates.

** The following m4sugar macros are new:
~   m4_append_uniq_w  m4_apply  m4_combine  m4_cond  m4_count
~   m4_dquote_elt  m4_echo  m4_expand  m4_ignore  m4_make_list  m4_max
~   m4_min  m4_newline  m4_shift2  m4_shift3  m4_unquote  m4_wrap_lifo

** Warnings are now generated by default when an installer invokes
~   'configure' with an unknown --enable-* or --with-* option.
~   These warnings can be disabled with the new AC_DISABLE_OPTION_CHECKING
~   macro, or by invoking 'configure' with --disable-option-checking.

** Existing obsolete macros
~   The documentation for the following macros is adjusted to make it
~   more clear that they have previously been marked obsolete, as their
~   functionality can be accomplished by other macros.  We have no
~   current plans to remove them from Autoconf.

~     AC_ENABLE  AC_STRUCT_ST_BLKSIZE  AC_STRUCT_ST_RDEV  AC_WITH

** Newly obsolete macros
~   The following macros have been marked obsolete, as they only
~   perform a subset of AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS.  We have no current
~   plans to remove them.

~     AC_AIX  AC_GNU_SOURCE  AC_ISC_POSIX  AC_MINIX

** AC_C_LONG_DOUBLE is obsolescent.
~   The documentation now says that AC_C_LONG_DOUBLE is obsolescent: it
~   tests for problems that are so old that it is no longer of
~   practical importance on current systems.  New programs need not use
~   AC_C_LONG_DOUBLE.  We have no current plans to remove it.

** AC_DIAGNOSE, AC_WARNING, and AC_FATAL are obsolescent.
~   The documentation now favors the use of M4sugar macros m4_warn and
~   m4_fatal, since the naming makes it more obvious that the
~   diagnostics are associated with M4 expansion (ie. when running
~   `autoconf'), and offers less confusion with the AC_MSG_ERROR,
~   AC_MSG_FAILURE, and AC_MSG_WARN macros which manage diagnostics
~   when running `configure'.  We have no current plans to remove these
~   macros.

* Major changes in Autoconf 2.61a (2006-12-11) [beta]

** AC_FUNC_FSEEKO was broken in 2.61; it didn't make fseeko and ftello visible
~   on many platforms.  This has been fixed.

** AC_FUNC_SETVBUF_REVERSED is now obsolete.  It is still defined for backward
~   compatibility but it does nothing.  The macro was already
~   obsolescent, as the last systems to have the problem were those
~   based on SVR2, which became obsolete in 1987.  The macro had bugs
~   on some modern systems and could no longer be maintained reliably
~   due to lack of ancient systems to test it on.

** config.status now uses awk instead of sed for most substitutions, for
speed.

~   - As a side effect multi-line values of substituted variables no
~     longer have a small limit in total size, though for portability
~     each line should not exceed the POSIX length limit for text lines.

~   - It is now documented that Makefile.in should not contain
~     overlapping variable occurrences, e.g., @address@hidden@.
~     Autoconf's behavior was always iffy in such cases, and the
~     awk implementation has changed the behavior.

** Many uses of 'echo' have been rewritten so that Autoconf-generated
~   scripts have fewer problems with strings or file names containing
~   embedded special characters such as backslash or leading "-".  This
~   was implemented by using `printf '%s\n' "$foo"' instead of `echo
~   "$foo"' when printf works.  Due to the implementation technique
~   used, Autoconf-generated scripts now run considerably more slowly
~   on ancient implementations lacking printf.  However, this should
~   not be a problem, since Autoconf-generated scripts in practice
~   invariably find a more-modern shell these days.

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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