Automake 1.10b test release

[Ralf Wildenhues]

I'm pleased to announce the Automake 1.10b test release.  It contains
a bunch of new features, and a bunch of bugfixes over previous versions,
and probably a bunch of new bugs.  Highlights, in no particular order:

Improved Fortran support, lzma/xz compressed tarballs, threaded automake
execution, faster (un)install rules, support for parallel tests, tests
with colored output, Linux kernel style silent compile rules, man pages
which are not transformed, better AM_MAINTAINER_MODE, non-".c" default
sources, man pages for aclocal and automake.  See the NEWS excerpt below
for more details, and a couple of things to note when upgrading.

Please try this release out on your software, test it, report any
problem you have with the new features, or with compatibility for
existing packages.  Any issues not explicitly noted below are bugs
that should be fixed before 1.11 is released.  Even if things are
noted below, do not hesitate to file a report if they cause unduly
inconvenience for you, that way there is a chance to fix the worst
issues before they are cut in stone.  Thanks.

If you run Automake's own test suite, try parallel make, even on
uniprocessor systems, to avoid the latency of all the sleep commands
(the tests/README file has more details).

Download here:

  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.10b.tar.gz
  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.10b.tar.bz2

Barring major issues, we hope to release 1.11 soon, so now really is
the time to test!

For those interested in contributing: the test release has been made off
the `next' branch in the git repository, which is available here:
  git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/automake.git
  git branch --track next origin/next

The `next' branch will be merged into the `master' branch before the
release.

Please send reports to <address@hidden>.

Thanks to everyone who has reported problems, contributed patches,
and helped testing Automake!


NEWS excerpt:
-------------

New in 1.10b (over 1.10):

* Version requirements:

  - Autoconf 2.62 or greater is required.

* Changes to aclocal:

  - The autoconf version check implemented by aclocal in aclocal.m4
    (and new in Automake 1.10) is degraded to a warning.  This helps
    in the common case where the Autoconf versions used are compatible.

* Changes to automake:

  - The automake program can run multiple threads for creating most
    Makefile.in files concurrently, if at least Perl 5.7.2 is available
    with interpreter-based threads enabled.  Set the environment variable
    AUTOMAKE_JOBS to the maximum number of threads to use, in order to
    enable this experimental feature.

* Changes to Libtool support:

  - Libtool generic flags are now passed to the install and uninstall
    modes as well.

  - distcheck works with Libtool 2.x even when LT_OUTPUT is used, as
    config.lt is removed correctly now.

* Languages changes:

  - subdir-object mode works now with Fortran (F77, FC, preprocessed
    Fortran, and Ratfor).

  - For files with extension .f90, .f95, .f03, or .f08, the flag
    $(FCFLAGS_f[09]x) computed by AC_FC_SRCEXT is now used in compile rules.

  - Files with extension .sx are also treated as preprocessed assembler.

  - Python 3.0 is supported now, Python releases prior to 2.0 are no
    longer supported.

  - The default source file extension (.c) can be overridden with
    AM_DEFAULT_SOURCE_EXT now.

* Miscellaneous changes:

  - Automake development is done in a git repository on Savannah now, see

      http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=automake.git

    A read-only CVS mirror is provided at

      cvs -d :pserver:address@hidden:/automake.git \
          checkout -d automake HEAD

  - "make dist" can now create xz-compressed tarballs,
    as well as (deprecated?) lzma-compressed tarballs.

  - Automake is licensed under GPLv3+.  `automake --add-missing' will
    by default install the GPLv3 file as COPYING if it is missing.
    It will also warn that the license file should be added to source
    control.  Note that Automake will never overwrite an existing COPYING
    file, even when the `--force-missing' option is used.

  - The manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL 1.3.

  - Automake ships and installs man pages for automake and aclocal now.

  - New shorthand `$(pkglibexecdir)' for `$(libexecdir)/@PACKAGE@'.

  - install-sh supports -C, which does not update the installed file
    (and its time stamps) if the contents did not change.

  - The `gnupload' script has been revamped.

  - The `depcomp' and `compile' scripts now work with MSVC under MSYS.

  - The targets `install' and `uninstall' are more efficient now, in that
    for example multiple files from one Automake variable such as
    `bin_SCRIPTS' are copied in one `install' (or `libtool --mode=install')
    invocation if they do not have to be renamed.

    Both install and uninstall may sometimes enter (`cd' into) the target
    installation directory now, when no build-local scripts are used.

    Both install and uninstall do not fail anymore but do nothing if an
    installation directory variable like `bindir' is set to the empty string.

    For built-in rules, `make install' now fails reliably if installation
    of a file failed.  Conversely, `make uninstall' even succeeds when
    issued multiple times.

    These changes may need some adjustments from users:  For example,
    some `install' programs refuse to install multiple copies of the
    same file in one invocation, so you may need to remove duplicate
    entries from file lists.

    Also, within one set of files, say, nobase_data_DATA, the order of
    installation may be changed, or even unstable among different hosts,
    due to the use of associative arrays in awk.  The increased use of
    awk matches a similar move in Autoconf to provide for better scaling.

    Further, most undocumented per-rule install command variables such as
    binSCRIPT_INSTALL have been removed because they are not needed any
    more.  Packages which use them should be using the appropriate one of
    INSTALL_{DATA,PROGRAM,SCRIPT} or their install_sh_{DATA,PROGRAM,SCRIPT}
    counterpart, depending on the type of files and the need for automatic
    target directory creation.

  - The "deleted header file problem" for *.m4 files is avoided by
    stub rules.  This allows `make' to trigger a rerun of `aclocal'
    also if some previously needed macro file has been removed.

  - Rebuild rules now also work for a removed `subdir/Makefile.in' in
    an otherwise up to date tree.

  - The `color-tests' option causes colored test result output on terminals.

  - The `parallel-tests' option enables a new test driver that allows for
    parallel test execution, inter-test dependencies, lazy test execution
    for unit-testing, and formatted result output as RST (reStructuredText)
    and HTML.  Enabling this option may require some changes to your test
    suite setup; see the manual for details.

  - The `silent-rules' option enables Linux kernel-style silent build output.
    This option requires the widely supported but non-POSIX `make' feature
    of recursive variable expansion, so do not use it if your package needs
    to build with `make' implementations that do not support it.
    Besides the normal option setting methods, it can also be enabled
    globally by the new automake option `--silent-rules'.

  - New prefix `notrans_' for manpages which should not be transformed
    by --program-transform.

  - New macro AM_COND_IF for conditional evaluation and conditional
    config files.

  - For AC_CONFIG_LINKS, if source and destination are equal, do not
    remove the file in a non-VPATH build.  Such setups work with Autoconf
    2.62 or newer.

  - AM_MAINTAINER_MODE now allows for an optional argument specifying
    the default setting.

  - AM_SUBST_NOTMAKE may prevent substitution of AC_SUBSTed variables,
    useful especially for multi-line values.

  - Automake's early configure-time sanity check now diagnoses an
    unsafe absolute source directory name and makes configure fail.

  - The Automake macros and rules cope better with whitespace in the
    current directory name, as long as the relative path to `configure'
    does not contain whitespace.  To this end, the values of `$(MISSING)'
    and `$(install_sh)' may contain suitable quoting, and their expansion
    might need `eval'uation if used outside of a makefile.  These
    undocumented variables may be used in several documented macros such
    as $(AUTOCONF) or $(MAKEINFO).

Bugs fixed in 1.10b:

* Long standing bugs:

  - Fix aix dependency tracking for libtool objects.

  - Work around AIX sh quoting issue in AC_PROG_CC_C_O, leading to
    unnecessary use of the `compile' script.

  - For nobase_*_LTLIBRARIES with nonempty directory components, the
    correct `-rpath' argument is used now.

  - `config.status --file=Makefile depfiles' now also works with the
    extra quoting used internally by Autoconf 2.62 and newer
    (it used to work only without the `--file=' bit).

  - The `missing' script works better with versioned tool names.

  - Semantics for `missing help2man' have been revamped:

    Previously, if `help2man' was not present, `missing help2man' would have
    the following semantics: if some man page was out of date but present, then
    a warning would be printed, but the exit status was 0.  If the man page was
    not present at all, then `missing' would create a replacement man page
    containing an error message, and exit with a status of 2.  This does not 
play
    well with `make': the next run will see this particular man page as being up
    to date, and will only error out on the next generated man page, if any;
    repeat until all pages are done.  This was not desirable.

    These are the new semantics: if some man page is not present, and help2man
    is not either, then `missing' will warn and generate the replacement page
    containing the error message, but exit successfully.  However, `make dist'
    will ensure that no such bogus man pages are packaged into a tarball.

  - Targets provided by automake behave better with `make -n', in that they
    take care not to create files.

  - `config.status Makefile... depfiles' works fine again in the presence of
    disabled dependency tracking.

  - The default no-op recursive rules for these targets also work with BSD make
    now: html, install-html, install-dvi, install-pdf, install-pdf, 
install-info.

  - `make distcheck' works also when both a directory and some file below it
    have been added to a distribution variable, such as EXTRA_DIST or *_SOURCES.

* Bugs introduced by 1.10:

  - Fix output of dummy dependency files in presence of post-processed
    Makefile.in's again, but also cope with long lines.

  - $(EXEEXT) is automatically appended to filenames of XFAIL_TESTS
    that have been declared as programs in the same Makefile.
    This is for consistency with the analogous change to TESTS in 1.10.

  - Fix order of standard includes to again be `-I. -I$(srcdir)',
    followed by directories containing config headers.