Autoconf 2.54 is released

[Akim Demaille]

The Autoconf Team -- Akim, Alexandre, Jim, Paul, and Tom -- is
extremely happy to announce the release of Autoconf 2.54!


  - Why should I upgrade from 2.53?

Several bug fixes, improved portability, no known incompatibility with
2.53, forthcoming Automake 1.7 requires 2.54.

Running `autoreconf -fv' should be enough.


   - Why should I upgrade from 2.13?

This version is no longer maintained.  It does not address recent
architectures, recent compilers etc.  We know that upgrading from 2.13
to 2.5x is not an easy task, especially because the Autoconf 2.13 was
extremely tolerant to incorrect macro invocations, but waiting longer
endangers the portability of your package and only delays the
conversation to newer Autoconf versions.  Worse: some maintainers now
spend a significant amount of time fixing bugs in 2.13 or backporting
macros from 2.53.


   - Where can I find it?

Tarballs and xdelta-style diffs can be downloaded from the usual
places, including

  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.54.tar.gz   (1020 KB)
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.54.tar.bz2  (769 KB)
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.53c-2.54.xdelta   (32 KB)
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.53-2.54.xdelta    (94 KB)

Here are the MD5 and SHA1 signatures:

a14c171d2e378a57c2251a5cf6a05058  autoconf-2.54.tar.gz
572ef5257f6927ad21dbad395f3da799  autoconf-2.54.tar.bz2
00ac4772a8475e678c748ca992e0d1ec  autoconf-2.53-2.54.xdelta
85cf5339c3cde69119c082de37434792  autoconf-2.53c-2.54.xdelta
5126d0f011a5c45f211ec7304739bd3e335bf37d  autoconf-2.54.tar.gz
0c79815174114be8b26fa824b9aa4b554bdca65b  autoconf-2.54.tar.bz2
dc07910de5468ac8e397b308432deedee85dd625  autoconf-2.53c-2.54.xdelta
d0d7a68d6b7a38a6390e09beec7f31dee5509c15  autoconf-2.53-2.54.xdelta



   - What's NEWS, doc?

** Executables

- autoreconf no longer changes the version of the gettext/po/intl
  support files. It now adds the files the correspond to the
  AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION declared in configure.ac.

  Warning: It now relies on the 'autopoint' program, which is part
  of GNU gettext 0.11.4 and newer.

  Please note that you need to have a GNU gettext version that
  corresponds at least to the AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION declared
  in configure.ac. You can upgrade to newer GNU gettext versions,
  though, without needing to change configure.ac.

- The -I DIR or --include=DIR option now appends DIR to the include path
  instead of prepending; this is for consistency with other GNU tools.
  The new -B DIR or --prepend-include=DIR option has the old behavior.

** Macros

- AC_OUTPUT
  Now handles all the gory details about LIBOBJS and LTLIBOBJS.
  Please, remove lines such as

        # This is necessary so that .o files in LIBOBJS are also
        # built via the ANSI2KNR-filtering rules.
        LIBOBJS=`echo $LIBOBJS|sed 's/\.o /\$U.o /g;s/\.o$/\$U.o/'`

  and read the `AC_LIBOBJ vs LIBOBJS' section.  Do not define U in
  your Makefiles either.

- AC_CONFIG_LINKS now makes copies if it can't make links.

- AC_FUNC_FNMATCH now tests only for POSIX compatibility, reverting to
  Autoconf 2.13 behavior.  The new macro AC_FUNC_FNMATCH_GNU also
  tests for GNU extensions to fnmatch, and replaces fnmatch if needed.

- AC_FUNC_SETVBUF_REVERSED no longer fails when cross-compiling.

- AC_PROG_CC_STDC is integrated into AC_PROG_CC.

- AC_PROG_F77 default search no longer includes cf77 and cfg77.

- New macros

  AC_C_BACKSLASH_A, AC_CONFIG_LIBOBJ_DIR, AC_GNU_SOURCE,
  AC_PROG_EGREP, AC_PROG_FGREP, AC_REPLACE_FNMATCH,
  AC_FUNC_FNMATCH_GNU, AC_FUNC_REALLOC, AC_TYPE_MBSTATE_T.

- AC_FUNC_GETLOADAVG
  looks for getloadavg.c in the CONFIG_LIBOBJ_DIR.

- AC_FUNC_MALLOC
  Now defines HAVE_MALLOC to 0 if `malloc' does not work, and asks
  for an AC_LIBOBJ replacement.

** Bug fixes

- Spurious complaints from `m4_bmatch' about invalid regular
  expressions are suppressed.

- Empty top_builddirs are properly handled.

- AC_CHECK_MEMBER works correctly when the member is an aggregate.

- AC_PATH_PROG
  Now colon in the optional path arguments are properly handled.

** Improved portability

- Both Autoconf the package, and the scripts it produces, should run
  more reliably with Zsh.  Bear in mind it is the default Bourne shell
  on Darwin.

- Autoconf and the scripts it produces no longer assume the existence of
  the obsolescent commands egrep and fgrep.

** Documentation

- Limitations of Make
  More of them.

- GNATS
  The GNATS base has moved to
  http://bugs.gnu.org/cgi-bin/gnatsweb.pl?database=autoconf

** Misc.

- config.log
  Now contains the list of ouput variables and files (AC_SUBST,
  AC_SUBST_FILES).