The Autoconf team -- Akim, Alexandre, Jim, Paul, and Tom -- is happy to annonce the birth of Autoconf 2.56, aka 2.55 with a packaging problem fixed.
- Why should I upgrade from 2.54? A few bug fixes, improved portability, no known incompatibility with 2.54 and 2.55, forthcoming Gettext release might require 2.55. See below for the list of user visible changes. 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 This version is no longer maintained.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 2.55. - Where can I find it? ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.56.tar.gz (1.1 MB) ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.56.tar.bz2 (795 KB) ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.54-2.56.delta (7 KB) and soon from the mirrors listed on http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html. Here are the MD5 and SHA1 signatures: 0e142e9bc890786845950e84ffb52adf autoconf-2.56.tar.gz 1b0ecb66f03af3f745981c7d8bfc2a91 autoconf-2.56.tar.bz2 edcb98aa66f5c74a579109aef9cf3270 autoconf-2.55-2.56.xdelta afff4a43d0b71a05de7b72e5a493a3e94219160c autoconf-2.56.tar.gz 5d2b082c2c76476a28a3b7bc0b537ccf6b5ad6f6 autoconf-2.56.tar.bz2 e1befdcb8d1032964021e29d6ad17975a766aa13 autoconf-2.55-2.56.xdelta NEWS: Release tips: Have your configure.ac checked by autoscan ("autoscan"). Try the warning options ("autoreconf -fv -Wall"). ** Documentation - AC_CHECK_HEADER, AC_CHECK_HEADERS More information on proper use. - Writing Test Programs This sections explains how to write good test sources to use with AC_COMPILE_IFELSE etc. It documents AC_LANG_PROGRAMS and so forth. - AC_FOO_IFELSE vs. AC_TRY_FOO Explains why Autoconf moves from AC_TRY_COMPILE etc. to AC_COMPILE_IFELSE and AC_LANG_PROGRAM etc. ** autoreconf - Is more robust to different Gettext installations. - Produces messages (when --verbose) to be understood by Emacs' compile mode. - Supports -W/--warnings. - -m/--make Once the GNU Build System reinstalled, run `./config.status --recheck && ./config.status && make' if possible. ** autom4te - Supports --cache, and --no-cache. - ~/.autom4te.cfg makes it possible to disable the caching mechanism (autom4te.cache). See `Customizing autom4te' in the documentation. ** Obsolete options Support for the obsoleted options -m, --macrodir, -l, --localdir is dropped in favor of the safer --include/--prepend-include scheme. ** Macros - New macros AC_COMPILER_IFELSE, AC_FUNC_MBRTOWC, AC_HEADER_STDBOOL, AC_LANG_CONFTEST, AC_LANG_SOURCE, AC_LANG_PROGRAM, AC_LANG_CALL, AC_LANG_FUNC_TRY_LINK, AC_MSG_FAILURE, AC_PREPROC_IFELSE. - Obsoleted Obsoleted macros are kept for Autoconf backward compatibility, but should be avoided in configure.ac. Running autoupdate is advised. AC_DECL_SYS_SIGLIST. ** Bug Fixes - Portability of the Autoconf package to Solaris. - Spurious warnings caused by config.status. This bug is benign, but painful: on some systems (typically FreeBSD), warnings such as: config.status: creating Makefile mv: Makefile: set owner/group (was: 1357/0): Operation not permitted could be issued. This is fixed. - Parallel Builds Simultaneous executions of config.status are possible again. - Precious variables accumulation config.status could stack several copies of the precious variables assignments. ** Plans for 2.57 - ./configure <host> The compatibility hooks with the old scheme will be completely removed. Please, advice/use `--build', `--host', and `--target' only. - AC_CHECK_HEADER, AC_CHECK_HEADERS The tests will be stricter, please make sure your invocations are valid. - shell functions Shell functions will gradually be introduced, probably starting with Autotest. If you know machines which are in use that you suspect *not* to support shell functions, please run the test suite of Autoconf 2.55 on it, and report the results to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
