GNU Automake 1.15.1 released

[Mathieu Lirzin]

We are pleased to announce the GNU Automake 1.15.1 maintenance release.

This much-needed, bug-fixing release comes after a year and a half of
stalling and inactivity in the Automake development. The main
motivation for this release is to remove some warnings that were
appearing due to the deprecation of features in Perl and gzip latest
versions.

See below for the detailed list of changes since the
previous version, as summarized by the NEWS file.

Download here:

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.15.1.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.15.1.tar.xz

Please report bugs and problems to <bug-***@gnu.org>,
and send general comments and feedback to <***@gnu.org>.

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

-*-*-*-

* WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!

- Makefile recipes generated by Automake 2.0 will expect to use an
'rm' program that doesn't complain when called without any non-option
argument if the '-f' option is given (so that commands like "rm -f"
and "rm -rf" will act as a no-op, instead of raising usage errors).
This behavior of 'rm' is very widespread in the wild, and it will be
required in the next POSIX version:

<http://austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=542>

Accordingly, AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE now expands some shell code that checks
that the default 'rm' program in PATH satisfies this requirement,
aborting the configure process if this is not the case. For the
moment, it's still possible to force the configuration process to
succeed even with a broken 'rm', that that will no longer be the case
for Automake 2.0.

- Automake 2.0 will require Autoconf 2.70 or later (which is still
unreleased at the moment of writing, but is planned to be released
before Automake 2.0 is).

- Automake 2.0 will drop support for the long-deprecated 'configure.in'
name for the Autoconf input file. You are advised to start using the
recommended name 'configure.ac' instead, ASAP.

- The ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS special make variable will be fully deprecated in
Automake 2.0: it will raise warnings in the "obsolete" category (but
still no hard error of course, for compatibilities with the many, many
packages that still relies on that variable). You are advised to
start relying on the new Automake support for AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIRS
instead (which was introduced in Automake 1.13).

- Automake 2.0 will remove support for automatic dependency tracking
with the SGI C/C++ compilers on IRIX. The SGI depmode has been
reported broken "in the wild" already, and we don't think investing
time in debugging and fixing is worthwhile, especially considering
that SGI has last updated those compilers in 2006, and retired
support for them in December 2013:
<http://www.sgi.com/services/support/irix_mips_support.html>

- Automake 2.0 will remove support for MS-DOS and Windows 95/98/ME
(support for them was offered by relying on the DJGPP project).
Note however that both Cygwin and MSYS/MinGW on modern Windows
versions will continue to be fully supported.

- Automake-provided scripts and makefile recipes might (finally!)
start assuming a POSIX shell in Automake 2.0. There still is no
certainty about this though: we'd first like to wait and see
whether future Autoconf versions will be enhanced to guarantee
that such a shell is always found and provided by the checks in
./configure.

- Starting from Automake 2.0, third-party m4 files located in the
system-wide aclocal directory, as well as in any directory listed
in the ACLOCAL_PATH environment variable, will take precedence
over "built-in" Automake macros. For example (assuming Automake
is installed in the /usr/local hierarchy), a definition of the
AM_PROG_VALAC macro found in '/usr/local/share/aclocal/my-vala.m4'
should take precedence over the same-named automake-provided macro
(defined in '/usr/local/share/aclocal-2.0/vala.m4').

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

New in 1.15.1:

* Bugs fixed:

- The code has been adapted to remove a warning present since Perl
5.22 stating that "Unescaped left brace in regex is deprecated".
This warning has become an hard error in Perl 5.26 (bug#22372).

- The generated Makefiles do not rely on the obsolescent GZIP
environment variable which was used for passing arguments to
'gzip'. Compatibility with old versions has been
preserved. (bug#20132)

* Miscellaneous changes:

- Support the Windows version of the Intel C Compiler (icl) in the
'compile' script in the same way the (compatible) Microsoft C
Compiler is supported.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Werner LEMBERG]

Post by Mathieu Lirzin
We are pleased to announce the GNU Automake 1.15.1 maintenance
release.

Thanks a lot for your efforts!

Note that you forgot to tag the new release in the git repository, so
please do that :-)


Werner

[Mathieu Lirzin]

Post by Werner LEMBERG

Post by Mathieu Lirzin
We are pleased to announce the GNU Automake 1.15.1 maintenance release.

Thanks a lot for your efforts!
Note that you forgot to tag the new release in the git repository, so
please do that :-)

I have just added the release tag to the repository.

Thank you for reporting this. :)

[Warren Young]

Post by Mathieu Lirzin
- Automake-provided scripts and makefile recipes might (finally!)
start assuming a POSIX shell in Automake 2.0. There still is no
certainty about this though: we'd first like to wait and see
whether future Autoconf versions will be enhanced to guarantee
that such a shell is always found and provided by the checks in
./configure.

Please clarify: does this apply to the shell script code written in *.m4 files included in the output configure script or to shell script code written in the user’s configure.ac file?

Currently, it’s the end user’s look-out if they do this. What I’m suggesting is that it is possible for Autoconf to bend over backwards to ensure that the generated configure script runs under a local POSIX shell, if available, thereby making possible use of POSIX shell features in end-user macros and such even on systems where /bin/sh is not a POSIX shell.

As I understand it, the main difficulty here is that the generated configure script can’t start with anything other than #!/bin/sh for portability. My suggestion is that one of the first things the generated code do is test whether it is running under a POSIX shell, and if not, try to find one and re-exec itself under that shell instead.

It’s generally possible to find a POSIX-compatible shell somewhere on the system these days if you only look hard enough: /usr/xpg4/bin/sh on old Solaris, /bin/bash on Linuxes where /bin/sh is pre-POSIX, /usr/bin/ksh on some SVR4 systems, etc.

Even the shells built into Busybox are fairly POSIX-compliant these days.