We are pleased to announce the Automake 1.11.1b test release. It contains a few new minor features, some new warnings meant to inform the users about backward-incompatibilities that will be introduced in the next major and minor versions, and a bunch of bugfixes. This release is almost backward-compatible with older versions, but for the fact that some deprecated constructs and usages might now be flagged when `-Wall' and/or `-Wobsolete' are in use.
See below for the detailed list of changes since automake 1.11.1, as summarized by the NEWS file. Download here: ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.11.1b.tar.gz ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.11.1b.tar.bz2 Please report bugs and problems to <bug-autom...@gnu.org>, and send general comments and feedback to <autom...@gnu.org>. Thanks to everyone who has reported problems, contributed patches, and helped testing Automake! -*-*-*- New in 1.11.1b: * WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities! - The Automake support for automatic de-ANSI-fication will be removed in the next major Automake release (1.12). - The `--acdir' option of aclocal is deprecated, and will probably be removed in the next major Automake release (1.12). - The exact order in which the directories in the aclocal macro search path are looked up is probably going to be changed in the next Automake release (1.12). - Starting from the next Automake release (1.12), warnings in the `extra-portability' category will be enabled by `-Wall' (right now, one has to use `-Wextra-portability' explicitly). * Changes to aclocal: - The `--acdir' option is deprecated. Now you should use the new options `--automake-acdir' and `--system-acdir' instead. - The `ACLOCAL_PATH' environment variable is now interpreted as a colon-separated list of additional directories to search after the automake internal acdir (by default ${prefix}/share/aclocal-APIVERSION) and before the system acdir (by default ${prefix}/share/aclocal). * Miscellaneous changes: - The `lzma' compression scheme and associated automake option `dist-lzma' is obsoleted by `xz' and `dist-xz' due to upstream changes. - You may adjust the compression options used in dist-xz and dist-bzip2. The default is now merely -e for xz, but still -9 for bzip; you may specify a different level via the XZ_OPT and BZIP2 envvars respectively. E.g., "make dist-xz XZ_OPT=-7" or "make dist-xz BZIP2=-5" - The `compile' script now converts some options for MSVC for a better user experience. Similarly, the new `ar-lib' script wraps Microsoft lib. - The py-compile script now accepts empty arguments passed to the options `--destdir' and `--basedir', and complains about unrecognized options. Moreover, a non-option argument or a special `--' argument terminates the list of options. - A developer that needs to pass specific flags to configure at "make distcheck" time can now, and indeed is advised to, do so by defining the developer-reserved makefile variable AM_DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS, instead of the old DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS. The DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS variable should now be reserved for the user; still, the old Makefile.am files that used to define it will still continue to work as before. - New macro AM_PROG_AR that looks for an archiver and wraps it in the new 'ar-lib' auxiliary script if the selected archiver is Microsoft lib. This new macro is required for LIBRARIES and LTLIBRARIES when automake is run with -Wextra-portability and -Werror. - When using DejaGnu-based testsuites, the user can extend the `site.exp' file generated by automake-provided rules by defining the special make variable `$(EXTRA_DEJAGNU_SITE_CONFIG)'. - The `install-info' rule can now be instructed not to create/update the `${infodir}/dir' file, by exporting the new environment variable `AM_UPDATE_INFO_DIR' to the value "no". Bugs fixed in 1.11.1b: * Bugs introduced by 1.11: - The parallel-tests driver no longer produces erroneous results with Tru64/OSF 5.1 sh upon unreadable log files. - The `parallel-tests' test driver does not report spurious successes when used with concurrent FreeBSD make (e.g., "make check -j3"). - When the parallel-tests driver is in use, automake now explicitly rejects invalid entries and conditional contents in TEST_EXTENSIONS, instead of issuing confusing and apparently unrelated error messages (e.g., "non-POSIX variable name", "bad characters in variable name", or "redefinition of TEST_EXTENSIONS), or even, in some situations, silently producing broken `Makefile.in' files. - The `silent-rules' option now truly silences all compile rules, even when dependency tracking is disabled. Also, when `silent-rules' is not used, `make' output no longer contains spurious backslash-only lines, thus once again matching what Automake did before 1.11. - The AM_COND_IF macro also works if the shell expression for the conditional is no longer valid for the condition. * Long-standing bugs: - The order of Yacc and Lex flags is fixed to be consistent with other languages: $(AM_YFLAGS) comes before $(YFLAGS), and $(AM_LFLAGS) before $(LFLAGS), so that the user variables override the developer variables. - "make distcheck" now correctly complains also when "make uninstall" leaves one and only one file installed in $(prefix). - A "make uninstall" issued before a "make install", or after a mere "make install-data" or a mere "make install-exec" does not spuriously fail anymore. - Automake now warns about more primary/directory invalid combinations, such as "doc_LIBRARIES" or "pkglib_PROGRAMS". - Rules generated by Automake now try harder to not change any files when `make -n' is invoked. Fixes include compilation of Emacs Lisp, Vala, or Yacc source files and the rule to update config.h. - Several scripts and the parallel-tests testsuite driver now exit with the right exit status upon receiving a signal. - A per-Makefile.am setting of -Werror does not erroneously carry over to the handling of other Makefile.am files. - The code for automatic dependency tracking works around a Solaris make bug triggered by sources containing repeated slashes when the `subdir-objects' option was used. - The makedepend and hp depmodes now work better with VPATH builds. - Java sources specified with check_JAVA are no longer compiled for "make all", but only for "make check". - An usage like "java_JAVA = foo.java" will now cause Automake to warn and error out if `javadir' is undefined, instead of silently producing a broken Makefile.in. - aclocal and automake now honour the configure-time definitions of AUTOCONF and AUTOM4TE when they spawn autoconf or autom4te processes. - The `install-info' recipe no longer tries to guess whether the `install-info' program is from Debian or from GNU, and adaptively change its behaviour; this has proven to be frail and easy to regress.
