Release Digest: GNU, August 12, 2004 Aug 13, 2004, 05 :00 UTC (0 Talkback[s]) (2750 reads)
GNU Automake 1.9.1
We're pleased to announce the release of Automake 1.9.1.
Automake is a tool for automatically generating `Makefile.in's
suitable for use with Autoconf, compliant with the GNU Makefile
standards, and portable to various make implementations.
Automake 1.9 was released on 2004-07-28 and was not announced
here to give us a chance to fix regressions before more people
use it; however no regression have been reported over the last
two weeks.
Automake 1.9.1, released on 2004-08-11, simply fixes three
longstanding bugs.
Adjust #line directives in `parser.h' (when ylwrap is not used).
(PR/432)
Fix definition of YLWRAP when ylwrap is installed in a default
aux directory found in a parent package.
Properly recognize AC_CANONICAL_BUILD and AC_CANONICAL_TARGET.
New in 1.9:
Makefile.in bloat reduction:
Inference rules are used to compile sources in subdirectories when
the `subdir-objects' option is used and no per-target flags are
used. This should reduce the size of some projects a lot, because
Automake used to output an explicit rule for each such object in
the past.
Automake no longer outputs three rules (.o, .obj, .lo) for each
object that must be built with explicit rules. It just outputs
the rules required to build the kind of object considered: either
the two .o and .obj rules for usual objects, or the .lo rule for
libtool objects.
Change to Libtool support:
Libtool tags are used with libtool versions that support them.
(I.e., with Libtool 1.5 or greater.)
Automake is now able to handle setups where a libtool library is
conditionally installed in different directories, as in
aclocal now ensures that AC_DEFUNs and AU_DEFUNs it discovers are
really evaluated, before it decides to include them in aclocal.m4.
This solves nasty problems with conditional redefinitions of
Autoconf macros in /usr/share/aclocal/*.m4 files causing extraneous
*.m4 files to be included in any project using these macros.
(Calls to AC_PROG_EGREP causing libtool.m4 to be included is the
most famous instance of this bug.)
Do not complain about missing conditionally AC_REQUIREd macros
that are not actually used. In 1.8.x aclocal would correctly
determine which of these macros were really needed (and include
only these in the package); unfortunately it would also require
all of them to be present in order to run. This created
situations were aclocal would not work on a tarball distributing
all the macros it uses. For instance running aclocal on a project
containing only the subset of the Gettext macros in use by the
project did not work, because gettext conditionally requires other
macros.
Portability improvements:
Tar format can be chosen with the new options tar-v7, tar-ustar, and
tar-pax. The new option filename-length-max=99 helps diagnosing
filenames that are too long for tar-v7. (PR/414)
Variables aumented with `+=' are now automatically flattened (i.e.,
trailing backslashes removed) and then wrapped around 80 colummns
(adding trailing backslashes). In previous versions, a long series
of
VAR += value1
VAR += value2
VAR += value3
...
would result in a single-line definition of VAR that could possibly
exceed the maximum line length of some make implementations.
Non-augmented variables are still output as they are defined in
the Makefile.am.
Miscellaneous:
Support Fortran 90/95 with the new "fc" and "ppfc" languages.
Works the same as the old Fortran 77 implementation; just replace
F77 with FC everywhere (exception: FFLAGS becomes FCFLAGS).
Requires a version of autoconf which provides AC_PROG_FC (>=2.59).
Support for conditional _LISP.
Support for conditional -hook and -local rules (PR/428).
Diagnose AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR calls following AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE. (PR/49)
Automake will not write any Makefile.ins after the first error it
encounters. The previous Makefile.ins (if any) will be left in
place. (Warnings will not prevent output, but remember they can
be turned into errors with -Werror.)
The restriction that SUBDIRS must contain direct children is gone.
Do not abuse.
The manual tells more about SUBDIRS vs. DIST_SUBDIRS.
It also gives an example of nested packages using AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS.
