We are pleased to announce the Automake 1.12.5 maintenance release. This release fixes a couple of minor bugs: one related to the use of Microsoft tools for compiling and linking, the other related to spurious remake rules being generated in some cases by the AC_CONFIG_HEADERS macro. Support for the Vala programming language is also enhanced.
See below for the detailed list of changes since Automake 1.12.4, as summarized by the NEWS file. Download here: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.12.5.tar.gz ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.12.5.tar.xz Please report bugs and problems to <bug-autom...@gnu.org>, and send general comments and feedback to <automake@gnu.org>. Thanks to everyone who has reported problems, contributed patches, and helped testing Automake! -*-*-*- New in 1.12.5: * WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities! - Future versions of Automake will likely drop support for the long-deprecated 'configure.in' name for the Autoconf input file. You are advised to use the recommended name 'configure.ac' instead. - Support for the "Cygnus-style" trees (as enabled by the 'cygnus' option) will be removed in the next major Automake release (1.13). - The long-obsolete (since automake 1.10) AM_PROG_MKDIR m4 macro will be removed in Automake 1.13. The $(mkdir_p) make variable and the @mkdir_p@ substitution will still remain available (as aliases of $(MKDIR_P)) for the moment, for better backward compatibility. - Autoconf 2.65 or later will be required by the next major Automake version (1.13). Until now, Automake has required Autoconf version 2.62 or later. - Starting from the next major Automake version (1.13), the rules to build pdf, ps and dvi output from Texinfo input will use the '--build-dir' option by default. Since such an option was only introduced in Texinfo 4.9, this means that Makefiles generated by future Automake versions will require at least that version of Texinfo. - Starting from the next major Automake version (1.13), the parallel testsuite harness (previously only enabled by the 'parallel-tests' option) will become the default one; the older serial testsuite harness will still be available through the use of the 'serial-tests' option. - The following long-obsolete m4 macros will be removed in the next major Automake version (1.13): AM_PROG_CC_STDC: superseded by AC_PROG_CC since October 2002 fp_PROG_CC_STDC: broken alias for AM_PROG_CC_STDC fp_WITH_DMALLOC: old alias for AM_WITH_DMALLOC AM_CONFIG_HEADER: superseded by AC_CONFIG_HEADERS since July 2002 ud_PATH_LISPDIR: old alias for AM_PATH_LISPDIR jm_MAINTAINER_MODE: old alias for AM_MAINTAINER_MODE ud_GNU_GETTEXT: old alias for AM_GNU_GETTEXT gm_PROG_LIBTOOL: old alias for AC_PROG_LIBTOOL fp_C_PROTOTYPES: old alias for AM_C_PROTOTYPES (which was part of the now-removed automatic de-ANSI-fication support of Automake) - All the "old alias" macros in 'm4/obsolete.m4' will be removed in the next major Automake version (1.13). - The '--acdir' option of aclocal is deprecated, and will probably be removed in the next major Automake release (1.13). You should use the options '--automake-acdir' and '--system-acdir' instead (which have been introduced in Automake 1.11.2). - The 'missing' script will no longer try to update the timestamp of out-of-date files that require a maintainer-specific tool to be remade, in case the user lacks such a tool (or has a too-old version of it). In fact, starting from Automake 1.13, all it'll do will be giving more useful warnings than a bare "command not found" from a make recipe would. * Vala support: - The AM_PROG_VALAC macro has been enhanced to takes two further optional arguments; it's signature now being AM_PROG_VALAC([MINIMUM-VERSION], [ACTION-IF-FOUND], [ACTION-IF-NOT-FOUND]) - By default, AM_PROG_VALAC no longer aborts the configure invocation if the Vala compiler found is too old, but simply prints a warning messages (as it did when the Vala compiler was not found). This should avoid unnecessary difficulties for end users that just want to compile the unmodified, distributed Vala-generated C sources, but happens to have an old Vala compiler in their PATH. This fixes automake bug#12688. - If no proper Vala compiler is found at configure runtime, AM_PROG_VALAC will set the AC_SUBST'd variable 'VALAC' to 'valac' rather than to ':'. This is a better default, because with it a triggered makefile rule invoking a Vala compilation will clearly fail with an informative error message like "valac: command not found", rather than silently, with the error possibly going unnoticed or triggering harder-to-diagnose fallout failures in later steps. * Miscellaneous changes: - automake and aclocal no longer honours the 'perllibdir' environment variable. That had always been intended only as an hack required in the testsuite, not meant for any use beyond that. Bugs fixed in 1.12.5: * Long-standing bugs: - Automake no longer generates spurious remake rules invoking autoheader to regenerate the template corresponding to header files specified after the first one in AC_CONFIG_HEADERS (automake bug#12495). - When wrapping Microsoft tools, the 'compile' script falls back to finding classic 'libname.a' style libraries when 'name.lib' and 'name.dll.lib' aren't available.
