autoconf-2.69e released [2.70 RELEASE CANDIDATE]

[zackw]

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It's been four weeks since the release of autoconf 2.69d.  I was
hoping to make the final release of 2.70 today, but there are still
two regressions from 2.69 that would ideally be fixed first:

  * `AC_LANG_PUSH/AC_LANG_POP` malfunction inside AC_DEFUN (#110294)
  * `AX_PROG_CC_FOR_BUILD` broken with 2.69c (#110350)

I have tagged and uploaded autoconf-2.69e this morning.  It is a
release candidate.  Because I have almost no time to work on autoconf
between now and early January, I intend to make the final release of
2.70 in one week (on 2020-12-08) *whether or not* the above two bugs
have been fixed.  If you want to see these bugs fixed for 2.70, this
is your last chance to help.

Testing is still very helpful; I would particularly like to invite
anyone who did an archive rebuild, or similar large-scale testing,
earlier in the release process, to repeat their tests with 2.69e.
Please continue to file issues in Savannah for any bugs you find.
At this point I'm not promising to see them fixed before the release,
even if they are regressions, but at least we won't forget about them.

Here are the compressed sources:
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.69e.tar.gz   (2.0MB)
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.69e.tar.xz   (1.3MB)

Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]:
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.69e.tar.gz.sig
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.69e.tar.xz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
  https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

Unofficial .deb packages are also available from my personal website:

  deb{,-src} https://research.owlfolio.org/scratchpad/debian/ ./

(These will be removed early next year, please do not depend on them
long-term.)

[*] Use a .sig file 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-2.69e.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 91FCC32B6769AA64

and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Automake 1.16.2

If you are upgrading from Autoconf 2.69, please consult the NEWS file
in the source tarball for complete release notes.  Important additions
to that file since the previous beta, 2.69d, are:

*** Setting CC to a C++ compiler is no longer supported.

  The C and C++ languages have diverged enough that we can no longer
  guarantee that test C programs will be processed as intended by a
  C++ compiler.  In this release, configure will proceed anyway, but
  many test results will be incorrect.  In a future release, we may
  make AC_PROG_CC error out if it detects that CC is a C++ compiler.

  See the “Language Choice” section of the manual for instructions on
  how to write configure scripts for C++ programs, and for programs
  with code in more than one language.

*** Running configure tests with warnings promoted to errors is not supported.

  For instance, setting ‘CC="gcc -Werror"’ on the configure command
  line, or adding -Werror to CFLAGS early in the configure script when
  the compiler recognizes this option, is very likely to cause
  subsequent tests to fail.

  This has never been guaranteed to work; the code generated by
  AC_CHECK_FUNC, for instance, is incorrect by a strict reading of the
  original 1989 C standard, and has been ever since that macro was
  introduced.  Problems are more likely with newer, pickier compilers.

  To enable compiler warnings and/or warnings-as-errors mode for your
  own code, we currently recommend a dedicated Makefile variable
  (e.g. ‘WARN_CFLAGS’) that is set by AC_SUBST when appropriate.
  The Gnulib ‘warnings’ and ‘manywarnings’ modules can help with this.
  We plan to add core support for probing for useful sets of compiler
  warnings in a future release.

*** Including confdefs.h manually may cause test failures.

  This has never been necessary; confdefs.h is automatically included
  at the beginning of all test programs (by AC_LANG_SOURCE).  Because
  of the way confdefs.h is generated and used, it is not practical to
  give it a multiple inclusion guard.  Therefore, if you include it
  yourself, all of its definitions will be scanned twice.

  Historically this has not been a problem, because confdefs.h only
  makes macro definitions, and the C standard allows redefinitions
  of macros as long as they’re exactly the same, but newer, pickier
  compilers may complain anyway (see for instance GCC bug 97998).

*** Configure scripts require support for $( ... ) command substitution.

  This POSIX shell feature is approximately the same age as
  user-defined functions, but there do exist shells that support
  functions and not $( ... ), such as Solaris 10 /bin/sh.

  Configure scripts will automatically locate a shell that supports
  this feature and re-execute themselves with it, if necessary, so
  the new requirement should be transparent to most users.

  In this release, most of Autoconf’s code still uses the older `...`
  notation for command substitution.

*** autoreconf now recognizes AM_GNU_GETTEXT_REQUIRE_VERSION.

  This macro can be used with gettext 0.19.6 or later to specify
  a *minimum* version requirement for gettext, instead of the *fixed*
  version requirement specified by AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION.

*** AS_IF’s if-false argument may be empty after macro expansion.

  This long-standing limitation broke configure scripts that used
  macros in this position that emitted shell code in 2.69 but no
  longer do, so we have lifted it.

Bugs fixed since autoconf 2.69d include:

* AS_IF supports an empty else clause after macro expansion (#110369) (fd633e92)
* autoreconf --force --install overwrites existing files (#110371) (40fa9edc)
* AC_INIT handles unusual arguments better (#110349) (3b8f293e)
* autom4te replaces its output file atomically (#110305) (1725c947)
* AS_ECHO(_N) is not broken by macros named ‘s’ or ‘n’ (#110377) 
(b7e32b4d)
* install-sh is checked in as synced from automake (#110368) (d1a65dc0)
* AC_LANG_SAVE/RESTORE do not provoke obsoletion warnings (#110375) (15acc26a)
  -- N.B. These are still considered obsolete; new code should use
     AC_LANG_PUSH and AC_LANG_POP.  The warnings have been squelched
     because libtool.m4 uses AC_LANG_SAVE, and we don't want package
     authors to think they have to fix libtool.m4 themselves.

* autoreconf supports AM_GNU_GETTEXT_REQUIRE_VERSION (20a53df1)
* CONFIG_SITE may be a list of entries (996f6081)
* Erlang support has been overhauled (8bf19fe8)
* autoreconf and autom4te work correctly with Perl 5.6 again (623ec9a0)
* AC_(CHECK_)HEADER_STDBOOL work correctly with C++ compilers (9886b7a9)
* AC_C_CHAR_UNSIGNED works correctly with C++ compilers (9e8bc1bf)
* AC_FUNC_SETPGRP gives the correct results on Solaris 10 (d81861ed)
* AC_FUNC_STRERROR_R includes string.h in its test program (c8b3f698)
* AC_REQUIRE_AUX_FILE can be used outside an AC_DEFUN (aa27fc57)
* --program-transform-name is not applied to build-aux scripts (0f7e5a54)

* The internal test suite is much more thorough and robust
  (b8c150bd, 82bc59ff, 7ee94631, 03f14a90, dbd374cf, a8b69e68, 8e540139)

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