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Release Digest: GNU, March 22, 2004

GNU Automake 1.8.3

We’re pleased to announce that Automake 1.8.3 was released two
weeks ago.

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.

This is a bug fix release. The list of bug fixes is appended
below.

You can find the new release here:

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.8.3.tar.gz

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.8.3.tar.gz.sig

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.8.3.tar.bz2

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.8.3.tar.bz2.sig

ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/automake/automake-1.8.3.tar.gz

ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/automake/automake-1.8.3.tar.gz.sig

ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/automake/automake-1.8.3.tar.bz2

ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/automake/automake-1.8.3.tar.bz2.sig

Soon it will also appear on the sources and GNU mirrors listed
here:

http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

http://sources.redhat.com/mirrors.html

Here are the MD5 sums:

5e8a685a304c0def671decdfe453a631 automake-1.8.3.tar.bz2
8821f75404a6f45d230ee73420dd177e automake-1.8.3.tar.gz

Please report bugs to <bug-automake@gnu.org>.

Bugs fixed in 1.8.3:

  • Long standing bugs:
    • Quote filenames in installation rules, in case $DESTDIR,
      $prefix, or any of the other *dir variables contain a space.

      Please note that Automake does not and cannot support spaces in
      filenames that are involved during the build. This change affects
      only installation paths, so that `make install’ does not bomb out
      in packages configured with
      ./configure –prefix ‘/c/Program Files’

    • Fix the depfiles output so it works with GNU sed (<4.1) even
      when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
    • Do not AC_SUBST(LIBOBJS) in AM_WITH_REGEX. This macro was
      unusable since Autoconf 2.54, which defines LIBOBJS itself.
    • Fix a potential (but unlikely) race condition in parallel elisp
      builds. (Introduced in 1.7.3.)
    • Do not assume that users override _DEPENDENCIES in all
      conditions where Automake will try to define them.
    • Do not use `mkdir -p’ in mkinstalldirs, unless this is GNU
      mkdir. Solaris 8’s `mkdir -p’ is not thread-safe and can break
      parallel builds.

      This fix also affects the $(mkdir_p) variable defined since
      Automake 1.8. It will be set to `mkdir -p’ only if mkdir is GNU
      mkdir, and to `mkinstalldirs’ or `install-sh -d’ otherwise.

    • Secure temporary directory creation in `make distcheck’.
      (PR/413)
    • Do not generate two build rules for `parser.h’ when the parser
      appears in two different conditionals.
    • Work around a Solaris 8 /bin/sh bug in the test for dependency
      checking. Usually ./configure will not pick this shell; so this fix
      only helps cases where the shell is forced to /bin/sh.
    • Bugs introduced by 1.8:
    • In some situations (hand-written `m4_include’s), aclocal would
      call the `File::Spec->rel2abs’ method, which was only introduced
      in Perl 5.6. This new version reestablish support Perl 5.005.

      It is likely that the next major Automake releases will require
      at least Perl 5.6. Consider upgrading your development environment
      if you are still using the five-year-old Perl 5.005.

    • Automake would sometimes fail to define rules for targets
      listed in variables defined in multiple conditions. For instance on
      if C1 bin_PROGRAMS = a else bin_PROGRAMS = b endif it would define
      only the `a.$(OBJEXT): a.c’ rule and omit the `b.$(OBJEXT): b.c’
      rule.
  • New sections in manual:
    • Third-Party Makefiles: how to interface third party
      Makefiles.
    • Upgrading: upgrading packages to newer Automake versions.
    • Multiple Outputs: handling tools that produce many
      outputs.

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