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//usr/share/doc/autoconf/NEWS
GNU Autoconf NEWS - User visible changes. * Noteworthy changes in release 2.69 (2012-04-24) [stable] ** Autoconf now requires perl 5.6 or better (but generated configure scripts continue to run without perl). * Noteworthy changes in release 2.68b (2012-03-01) [beta] Released by Eric Blake, based on git versions 2.68.*. ** Autoconf-generated configure scripts now unconditionally re-execute themselves with $CONFIG_SHELL, if that's set in the environment. ** The texinfo documentation no longer specifies "front-cover" or "back-cover" texts, so that it may now be included in Debian's "main" section. ** Support for the Go programming language has been added. The new macro AC_LANG_GO sets variables GOC and GOFLAGS. ** AS_LITERAL_IF again treats '=' as a literal. Regression introduced in 2.66. ** The macro AS_EXECUTABLE_P, present since 2.50, is now documented. ** Macros - AC_PROG_LN_S and AS_LN_S now fall back on 'cp -pR' (not 'cp -p') if 'ln -s' does not work. This works better for symlinks to directories. - New macro AC_HEADER_CHECK_STDBOOL. - New and updated macros for Fortran support: AC_FC_CHECK_BOUNDS to enable array bounds checking AC_F77_IMPLICIT_NONE and AC_FC_IMPLICIT_NONE to disable implicit integer AC_FC_MODULE_EXTENSION to compute the Fortran 90 module name extension AC_FC_MODULE_FLAG for the Fortran 90 module search path flag AC_FC_MODULE_OUTPUT_FLAG for the Fortran 90 module output directory flag AC_FC_PP_SRCEXT for preprocessed Fortran source files extensions AC_FC_PP_DEFINE for the Fortran preprocessor define flag * Noteworthy changes in release 2.68 (2010-09-22) [stable] Released by Eric Blake, based on git versions 2.67.*. ** AC_MSG_ERROR (and AS_ERROR) can once again be followed immediately by `dnl'. Regression introduced in 2.66. ** AC_INIT again allows URLs with '?' for its BUG-REPORT argument. Regression introduced in 2.66. ** AC_REPLACE_FUNCS again allows a non-literal argument, such as a shell variable that expands to a list of functions to check. Regression introduced in 2.66. ** AT_BANNER() with empty argument will cause visual separation from previous test category. ** The macros AC_PREPROC_IFELSE, AC_COMPILE_IFELSE, AC_LINK_IFELSE, and AC_RUN_IFELSE now warn if the first argument failed to use AC_LANG_SOURCE or AC_LANG_PROGRAM to generate the conftest file contents. A new macro AC_LANG_DEFINES_PROVIDED exists if you have a compelling reason why you cannot use AC_LANG_SOURCE but must avoid the warning. ** The macro m4_define_default is now documented. ** Symlinked config.cache files are supported; configure now tries to update non-symlinked cache files atomically, so that concurrent configure runs do not leave behind broken cache files. It is still unspecified which subset or union of results is cached though. ** Autotest testsuites should not contain long text lines any more, and be portable even when very many test groups are used. ** AT_CHECK semantics with respect to the Autotest variable $at_status and shell execution environment of the arguments are documented now. ** AC_FC_LIBRARY_LDFLAGS now tolerates output from newer gfortran. ** Newly obsolete macros The following macros have been marked obsolete. New programs should use the corresponding Gnulib modules. Gnulib not only detects a larger set of portability problems with these functions, but also provides complete workarounds. AC_FUNC_ERROR_AT_LINE AC_FUNC_LSTAT_FOLLOWS_SLASHED_SYMLINK AC_FUNC_MKTIME AC_FUNC_STRTOD * Major changes in Autoconf 2.67 (2010-07-21) [stable] Released by Eric Blake, based on git versions 2.66.*. ** AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS with more than one subdirectory at a time works again. Regression introduced in 2.66. ** AC_CHECK_SIZEOF of a pointer type works again. Regression introduced in 2.66. ** New macro AC_FC_LINE_LENGTH to accept long Fortran source code lines. ** AC_PREPROC_IFELSE now keeps the preprocessed output in the conftest.i file for inspection by the commands in the ACTION-IF-TRUE argument. ** AC_INIT again allows parentheses and other characters that are literal in single- or double-quoted strings, and in quoted and unquoted here-documents, for its PACKAGE and VERSION arguments. Regression introduced in 2.66. ** autoreconf passes warning flags to new enough versions of aclocal. ** Running an Autotest testsuite in parallel mode no longer triggers a race condition that could cause the testsuite run to end early, fixing a sporadic failure in autoconf's own testsuite. Bug present since introduction of parallel tests in 2.63b. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.66 (2010-07-02) [stable] Released by Eric Blake, based on git versions 2.65.*. ** AC_FUNC_MMAP works in C++ mode again. Regression introduced in 2.65. ** Use of m4_divert without a named diversion now issues a syntax warning, since it is seldom right to change diversions behind autoconf's back. ** The macros AC_TYPE_INT8_T, AC_TYPE_INT16_T, AC_TYPE_INT32_T, and AC_TYPE_INT64_T work again. Regression introduced in 2.65. ** AC_PROG_INSTALL correctly uses `shtool' again. Regression introduced in 2.64. ** Autoconf should work on EBCDIC hosts. ** AC_CHECK_DECL and AC_CHECK_DECLS accept optional function argument types for overloaded C++ functions. ** AS_SET_CATFILE accepts nonliterals in its variable name argument now. ** Autotest testsuites accept an option --recheck to rerun tests that failed or passed unexpectedly during the last non-debug testsuite run. ** AC_ARG_ENABLE and AC_ARG_WITH now also accept `+' signs in `--enable-*' and `--with-*' arguments, converting them to underscores for the variable names. ** In configure scripts, loading CONFIG_SITE no longer searches PATH, and problems in loading the configuration site files are diagnosed. ** Autotest testsuites may optionally provide colored test results. ** The previously undocumented Autotest macros AT_ARG_OPTION and AT_ARG_OPTION_ARG have seen bug fixes and are documented now. AT_ARG_OPTION has been changed in that the negative of a long option --OPTION is now --no-OPTION rather than --noOPTION. ** The macro AS_LITERAL_IF is slightly more conservative; text containing shell quotes are no longer treated as literals. Furthermore, a new macro, AS_LITERAL_WORD_IF, adds an additional level of checking that no whitespace occurs in literals. ** The macros AS_TR_SH and AS_TR_CPP no longer expand their results. ** The following macros are now documented: AS_BOX ** New macro AC_FC_FIXEDFORM to accept fixed-form Fortran. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.65 (2009-11-21) [stable] Released by Eric Blake, based on git versions 2.64.*. ** Autoconf is now licensed under the General Public License version 3 or later (GPLv3+). As with earlier versions, the license includes an exception clause so that you may release a configure script generated by autoconf under the license of your own program. ** New macros to support Objective C++. AC_PROG_OBJCXX AC_PROG_OBJCXXCPP ** The following undocumented autoconf macros, removed in Autoconf 2.64, have been reinstated: AH_CHECK_HEADERS These macros are present only for backwards compatibility purposes. ** The macro AC_LANG_COMPILER no longer fails on embedded systems that lack fopen in the C library, such as AVR or RTEMS (regression introduced in 2.64). ** The AC_FC_FREEFORM macro no longer suffers from a whitespace bug that made it fail with some Fortran compilers (regression introduced in 2.64). ** The AC_TYPE_UINT64_T and AC_TYPE_INT64_T macros have been fixed to no longer mistakenly select a 32-bit type on some compilers (bug present since macros were introduced in 2.59c). ** The AC_FUNC_MMAP macro has been fixed to be portable to systems like Cygwin (bug present since macro was introduced in 2.0). ** The following documented autotest macros are new: AT_CHECK_EUNIT ** The following m4sugar macros now quote their expansion: m4_toupper m4_tolower ** The following m4sugar macros are new: m4_escape ** The m4sugar macro m4_text_wrap now copes with embedded quoting without requiring quadrigraphs. For uses like AC_ARG_VAR([a], [[b c]]), this gives the intuitive behavior of "[b c]" in the output (2.63 gave the output of "[b], [c]", and 2.64 encountered a failure). ** The `$tmp' temporary directory used in config.status is documented for public use now. ** config.status now provides a --config option to produce the configuration. ** Many cache variables used by Autoconf's macros are now documented. ** Configure scripts work better on DJGPP by avoiding a bug present in the DJGPP port of bash 2.04 in handling 'return' in a shell function (regression introduced in 2.64). * Major changes in Autoconf 2.64 (2009-07-26) [stable] Released by Eric Blake, based on git versions 2.63b.*. ** Autoconf now requires GNU M4 1.4.6 or later. Earlier versions of M4 have a bug in regular expression handling that interferes with some of the speedups provided since Autoconf 2.63. GNU M4 1.4.13 or later is recommended. ** AS_IF and AS_CASE have been taught to avoid syntax errors even when given arguments that expand to just whitespace. ** The following documented autoconf macros are new: AC_ERLANG_SUBST_ERTS_VER ** The autoheader tool now understands m4 macro arguments passed to AC_DEFINE and AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED. ** Ensure AT_CHECK can support commands that include a # given with proper m4 quoting. For shell comments, this is a new feature; for non-shell comments, this fixes a regression introduced in 2.63b. Additionally, AT_CHECK correctly supplies shell escapes for metacharacters occurring in m4 macro expansions within the expected stdout and stderr parameters. ** The macro AT_CHECK now understands the concept of hard failure. If a test exits with an unexpected status 99, cleanup actions for the test are inhibited and the test is treated as a failure regardless of AT_XFAIL_IF. It also understands the new directives ignore-nolog, stdout-nolog, and stderr-nolog. ** The following documented autotest macros are new: AT_CHECK_UNQUOTED AT_FAIL_IF AT_SKIP_IF ** The following documented m4sugar macros are new: m4_argn m4_copy_force m4_default_nblank m4_default_nblank_quoted m4_ifblank m4_ifnblank m4_rename_force ** The autoconf testsuite now exercises all Erlang macros. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.63b (2009-03-31) [beta] Released by Eric Blake, based on git versions 2.63.*. ** The manual is now shipped under the terms of the GNU FDL 1.3. ** AC_REQUIRE now detects the case of an outer macro which first expands then later indirectly requires the same inner macro. Previously, this case led to silent out-of-order expansion (bug present since 2.50); it now issues a syntax warning, and duplicates the expansion of the inner macro to guarantee dependencies have been met. See the manual for advice on how to refactor macros in order to avoid the bug in earlier autoconf versions and avoid increased script size in the current version. ** AC_DEFUN_ONCE has improved semantics. Previously, a macro declared with AC_DEFUN_ONCE warned on a second invocation; and out-of-order expansion was still possible. Now, dependencies are guaranteed, and subsequent invocations are a silent no-op. This makes AC_DEFUN_ONCE an ideal macro for silencing AC_REQUIRE warnings. ** The following macros are now defined with AC_DEFUN_ONCE. This means a subtle change in semantics; previously, an AC_DEFUN macro could expand one of these macros multiple times or surround the macro inside shell conditional text to bypass the effects of these macros, but now the macro will expand exactly once, and prior to the start of any enclosing AC_DEFUN macro: AC_CANONICAL_BUILD AC_CANONICAL_HOST AC_CANONICAL_TARGET AC_HEADER_ASSERT AC_PROG_INSTALL AC_PROG_MKDIR_P AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS ** AC_LANG_ERLANG works once again (regression introduced in 2.61a). ** AC_HEADER_ASSERT is fixed so that './configure --enable-assert' no longer mistakenly disables assertions. ** AC_INIT now takes an optional fifth parameter that can be used to set AC_PACKAGE_URL, a URL for the package's home page; the URL is used in `configure --help' and is also available via AC_DEFINE. ** Autotest testsuites accept an option --jobs[=N] for parallel testing. This feature is still in testing, and may not work on every platform, help in improving it would be appreciated. ** Autotest testsuites do not attempt to write startup error messages to the log file before that is opened (regression introduced in 2.63). ** Configure scripts now use shell functions. This feature leads to smaller configure files and faster execution. ** Present But Cannot Be Compiled: Autoconf will now proceed with the compiler's result if a header is present but cannot be compiled. The warning is still printed, and you should really fix it by providing a fourth parameter to AC_CHECK_HEADER/AC_CHECK_HEADERS. ** Autoreconf added aclocal to the set of programs affected by the `autoreconf -I dir' option. ** The following documented m4sugar macros are new: m4_chomp m4_chomp_all m4_cleardivert m4_curry m4_default_quoted m4_esyscmd_s m4_map_args m4_map_args_pair m4_map_args_sep m4_map_args_w m4_set_map m4_set_map_sep m4_stack_foreach m4_stack_foreach_lifo m4_stack_foreach_sep m4_stack_foreach_sep_lifo ** The following m4sugar macros are documented now, but in some cases with slightly different semantics than what the previous undocumented version had: m4_copy m4_dumpdefs m4_rename m4_version_prereq ** The m4sugar macro m4_expand has been taught to handle unterminated comments and shell case statements. As a result, it is used internally in more places, such as AC_DEFINE and AT_CHECK. Most uses of AC_DEFINE and AT_CHECK should not behave any differently; however, it may be necessary to add double-quoting around unbalanced `(' where single-quoting used to be sufficient. ** The following documented m4sh macros are new: AS_INIT_GENERATED AS_LINENO_PREPARE AS_ME_PREPARE AS_SET_STATUS AS_VAR_APPEND AS_VAR_ARITH AS_VAR_COPY ** The following m4sh macros are documented now, but in some cases with slightly different semantics than what the previous undocumented version had: AS_ECHO AS_ECHO_N AS_ESCAPE AS_EXIT AS_LITERAL_IF AS_UNSET AS_VAR_IF AS_VAR_POPDEF AS_VAR_PUSHDEF AS_VAR_SET AS_VAR_SET_IF AS_VAR_TEST_SET AS_VERSION_COMPARE ** The m4sh macros AS_IF and AS_CASE can now be used in shell lists. The responsibility for supplying a trailing newline now belongs to the call site, but since most users did not add dnl, this generally results in fewer empty lines in configure. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.63 (2008-09-09) [stable] Released by Eric Blake, based on git versions 2.62.*. ** AC_C_BIGENDIAN does not mistakenly report "universal" for some bigendian hosts, a regression introduced with universal binary support in 2.62. ** AC_PATH_X now includes /lib64 and /usr/lib64 in its list of default library directories. ** AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS no longer conflicts with an external AC_DEFINE([__EXTENSIONS__]). This fixes a regression introduced in 2.62 when using macros such as AC_AIX that were made obsolete in favor of the more portable AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS. ** AC_CHECK_TARGET_TOOLS is usable in the non-cross-compile case. ** Newly obsolete macros The following macro has been marked obsolete, since current porting targets can safely assume C89 semantics that signal handlers return void. We have no current plans to remove the macro. AC_TYPE_SIGNAL ** The macros m4_map and m4_map_sep now ignore any list elements consisting of just empty quotes, and m4_map_sep now expands its separator. This fixes a regression in 2.62 when these macros were first documented, for the sake of clients expecting the semantics that these macros had prior to that time. The new macros m4_mapall and m4_mapall_sep, along with extra quoting of the separator, can be used to get the semantics that m4_map_sep had in 2.62. ** Clients of m4_expand, such as AS_HELP_STRING and AT_SETUP, can now handle properly quoted but otherwise unbalanced parentheses (for some macros, this fixes a regression in 2.62). ** Two new quadrigraphs have been introduced: @{:@ for (, and @:}@ for ), allowing the output of unbalanced parentheses in more contexts. ** The following m4sugar macros are new: m4_cleardivert m4_joinall m4_mapall m4_mapall_sep m4_reverse m4_set_add m4_set_add_all m4_set_contains m4_set_contents m4_set_delete m4_set_difference m4_set_dump m4_set_empty m4_set_foreach m4_set_intersection m4_set_list m4_set_listc m4_set_remove m4_set_size m4_set_union ** The following m4sugar macros now accept multiple arguments, as is the case with underlying m4: m4_defn m4_popdef m4_undefine ** The following m4sugar macros now guarantee linear scaling; they previously had linear scaling with m4 1.6 but quadratic scaling when using m4 1.4.x. All macros built on top of these also gain the scaling improvements. m4_bmatch m4_bpatsubsts m4_case m4_cond m4_do m4_dquote_elt m4_foreach m4_join m4_list_cmp m4_map m4_map_sep m4_max m4_min m4_shiftn ** AT_KEYWORDS once again performs expansion on its argument, such that AT_KEYWORDS([m4_if([$1], [], [default])]) no longer complains about the possibly unexpanded m4_if [regression introduced in 2.62]. ** Config header templates `#undef UNDEFINED /* comment */' do not lead to nested comments any more; regression introduced in 2.62. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.62 (2008-04-05) [stable] Released by Eric Blake, based on git versions 2.61a.*. ** Many optimizations have been applied to make overall execution faster. ** Autotest now makes use of shell functions. ** config.status now uses awk instead of sed also for config headers. - As a side effect, AC_DEFINE and AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED now handle multi-line values, i.e., backslash-newline combinations are handled correctly. Further, for config headers, the total size of values is not limited by the POSIX length limit of text lines any more, only each single line. ** New config variable `top_build_prefix'. ** New Autoconf macros: AC_AUTOCONF_VERSION AC_OPENMP AC_PATH_PROGS_FEATURE_CHECK ** AC_C_BIGENDIAN now supports universal binaries a la Mac OS X. ** AC_C_RESTRICT now prefers to #define 'restrict' to a variant spelling like '__restrict' if the variant spelling is available, as this is more likely to work when mixing C and C++ code. ** AC_CHECK_ALIGNOF's type argument T is now documented better: it must be a string of tokens such that "T y;" is a valid member declaration in a struct. ** AC_CHECK_SIZEOF now accepts objects as well as types: the general rule is that sizeof (X) works, then AC_CHECK_SIZEOF (X) should work. ** AC_CHECK_TYPE and AC_CHECK_TYPES now work on any C type-name; formerly, they did not work for function types. In C++, they now work on any type-id that can be the operand of sizeof; this is similar to C, except it excludes anonymous struct and union types. Formerly, some (but not all) C++ types involving anonymous struct and union were accepted, though this was not documented. ** AC_CONFIG_LINKS now prefers to link against files in the build tree if found, and it works to link against a file of the same name in the source tree, even if both trees coincide. ** AC_INIT no longer alters $@; regression introduced in 2.60. ** AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS now defines _ALL_SOURCE for Interix platforms. ** AS_HELP_STRING no longer underquotes its first argument; it also handles the case where the first argument contains single-quoted commas. For example, "AS_HELP_STRING([-a, [--arg[=foo]]], [bar])" produces: " -a, --arg[=foo] bar" Additionally, the macro now takes two additional arguments, indent-column and wrap-column; these should not normally be needed, but can be used to fine-tune how the output text is wrapped. ** AC_PROG_INSTALL now requires an install program that can install multiple files into a target directory. ** The command 'autoconf -' now correctly processes a file from stdin. ** 'autoreconf -m' now honors $MAKE. ** For all of the directory arguments for 'configure', such as '--prefix' or '--bindir', trailing slashes are stripped. As an example, if tab completion in the user's shell appends trailing slashes, the command './configure --prefix=/usr/' will still result in an expanded libdir value of /usr/lib, not /usr//lib. ** `configure --help=recursive' now works in read-only trees and from unconfigured build trees. ** If precious variables differ only in whitespace, then the cache consistency check warns instead of fails, and reuses the old value. ** AT_BANNER is now documented. ** AT_SETUP now handles macro expansions properly when calculating line length. ** Autotest now determines $srcdir correctly. ** Testsuites built by autotest now accept a -C/--directory=DIR option to adjust the working directory prior to creating files. ** Autoconf now requires GNU M4 1.4.5 or later. Earlier versions of M4 have a bug in macro tracing that interferes with the interaction between Autoconf and Automake. GNU M4 1.4.11 or later is recommended. The configure search for a working M4 is improved. ** For portability with the eventual M4 2.0, macros should no longer use anything larger than $9 to refer to arguments. ** Documentation for m4sugar is improved. - The following macros were previously available as undocumented interfaces; the macros are now documented as stable interfaces. __oline__ m4_assert m4_bmatch m4_bpatsubsts m4_car m4_case m4_cdr m4_default m4_divert_once m4_divert_pop m4_divert_push m4_divert_text m4_do m4_errprintn m4_fatal m4_flatten m4_ifndef m4_ifset m4_ifval m4_ifvaln m4_location m4_n m4_shiftn m4_strip m4_warn - The following macros were previously available as undocumented interfaces, but had bug fixes or semantic changes as part of this release. Packages that relied on the undocumented behavior should be analyzed to make sure they will still work with the new documented behavior. m4_cmp m4_list_cmp m4_join m4_map m4_map_sep m4_sign m4_text_box m4_text_wrap m4_version_compare - The m4_wrap macro used to have unspecified order, but now guarantees FIFO order. m4_wrap_lifo was added to guarantee LIFO order. - Packages using the undocumented m4sugar macro m4_PACKAGE_VERSION should consider using the new AC_AUTOCONF_VERSION instead. - m4sugar macros that are not documented in the manual are still deemed experimental, and should not be used outside of Autoconf. ** The m4sugar macros m4_append and m4_append_uniq, first documented in 2.60, have been fixed to treat both the string and the separator arguments consistently with regards to quoting. Prior to this fix, m4_append_uniq could mistakenly duplicate entries if the expansion of the separator resulted in a different string (for example, if it contained quotes, a comma, or a macro name). However, it means that programs previously using m4_append([name], [string], [[, ]]) are now using a four-character separator instead of the intended comma and space. If you need portability to earlier versions of Autoconf, you can insert the following snippet after AC_INIT but before any other macro expansions, to enforce the new semantics: m4_pushdef([m4_append], [m4_define([$1], m4_ifdef([$1], [m4_defn([$1])[$3]])[$2])]) Additionally, m4_append_uniq now takes optional parameters that can be used to take action depending on whether anything was appended, and warns if a non-empty separator occurs within the string being appended, since that can lead to duplicates. ** The following m4sugar macros are new: m4_append_uniq_w m4_apply m4_combine m4_cond m4_count m4_dquote_elt m4_echo m4_expand m4_ignore m4_make_list m4_max m4_min m4_newline m4_shift2 m4_shift3 m4_unquote m4_wrap_lifo ** Warnings are now generated by default when an installer invokes 'configure' with an unknown --enable-* or --with-* option. These warnings can be disabled with the new AC_DISABLE_OPTION_CHECKING macro, or by invoking 'configure' with --disable-option-checking. ** Existing obsolete macros The documentation for the following macros is adjusted to make it more clear that they have previously been marked obsolete, as their functionality can be accomplished by other macros. We have no current plans to remove them from Autoconf. AC_ENABLE AC_STRUCT_ST_BLKSIZE AC_STRUCT_ST_RDEV AC_WITH ** Newly obsolete macros The following macros have been marked obsolete, as they only perform a subset of AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS. We have no current plans to remove them. AC_AIX AC_GNU_SOURCE AC_ISC_POSIX AC_MINIX ** AC_C_LONG_DOUBLE is obsolescent. The documentation now says that AC_C_LONG_DOUBLE is obsolescent: it tests for problems that are so old that it is no longer of practical importance on current systems. New programs need not use AC_C_LONG_DOUBLE. We have no current plans to remove it. ** AC_DIAGNOSE, AC_WARNING, and AC_FATAL are obsolescent. The documentation now favors the use of M4sugar macros m4_warn and m4_fatal, since the naming makes it more obvious that the diagnostics are associated with M4 expansion (ie. when running `autoconf'), and offers less confusion with the AC_MSG_ERROR, AC_MSG_FAILURE, and AC_MSG_WARN macros which manage diagnostics when running `configure'. We have no current plans to remove these macros. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.61a (2006-12-11) ** AC_FUNC_FSEEKO was broken in 2.61; it didn't make fseeko and ftello visible on many platforms. This has been fixed. ** AC_FUNC_SETVBUF_REVERSED is now obsolete. It is still defined for backward compatibility but it does nothing. The macro was already obsolescent, as the last systems to have the problem were those based on SVR2, which became obsolete in 1987. The macro had bugs on some modern systems and could no longer be maintained reliably due to lack of ancient systems to test it on. ** config.status now uses awk instead of sed for most substitutions, for speed. - As a side effect multi-line values of substituted variables no longer have a small limit in total size, though for portability each line should not exceed the POSIX length limit for text lines. - It is now documented that Makefile.in should not contain overlapping variable occurrences, e.g., @VAR1@VAR2@. Autoconf's behavior was always iffy in such cases, and the awk implementation has changed the behavior. ** Many uses of 'echo' have been rewritten so that Autoconf-generated scripts have fewer problems with strings or file names containing embedded special characters such as backslash or leading "-". This was implemented by using `printf '%s\n' "$foo"' instead of `echo "$foo"' when printf works. Due to the implementation technique used, Autoconf-generated scripts now run considerably more slowly on ancient implementations lacking printf. However, this should not be a problem, since Autoconf-generated scripts in practice invariably find a more-modern shell these days. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.61 (2006-11-17) ** New macros AC_C_FLEXIBLE_ARRAY_MEMBER, AC_C_VARARRAYS. ** AC_ARG_ENABLE and AC_ARG_WITH now allow '.' in feature and package names. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.60b (2006-10-22) ** BIN_SH Autoconf-generated shell scripts no longer export BIN_SH, due to configuration hassles with this. Installers who need BIN_SH in their environment should set it before invoking 'configure' and 'make'. As far as we know, this affects only Unixware installations. ** Obsolescent macros The documentation now says that the following macros are obsolescent, as they are superseded by Gnulib: AC_FUNC_FNMATCH AC_FUNC_FNMATCH_GNU AC_FUNC_GETLOADVG AC_REPLACE_FNMATCH New programs should use the Gnulib counterparts of these macros. We have no current plans to remove them from Autoconf. ** AC_COMPUTE_INT no longer caches or reports results. ** AC_CHECK_DECL now also works with aggregate objects. ** AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS now defines _TANDEM_SOURCE for NonStop platforms. ** GNU M4 1.4.7 or later is now recommended. ** m4_mkstemp New M4sugar macro, which is more secure than the POSIX M4 maketemp. ** m4_maketemp Now an alias for m4_mkstemp. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.60a (2006-08-25) ** GNU M4 1.4.6 or later is now recommended. ** The check for C99 now tests for varargs macros, as documented. It also tests that the preprocessor supports 64-bit integers. ** Autoconf now uses constructs like "#ifdef HAVE_STDLIB_H" rather than "#if HAVE_STDLIB_H", so that it now works with "gcc -Wundef -Werror". ** The functionality of the undocumented _AC_COMPUTE_INT is now provided by a public and documented macro, AC_COMPUTE_INT. The parameters to the two macros are different, so autoupdate will not change the old private name to the new one. _AC_COMPUTE_INT may be removed in a future release. ** AC_TYPE_LONG_LONG_INT and AC_TYPE_UNSIGNED_LONG_LONG_INT now require that long long types be at least 64 bits wide, as C99 and tradition requires. Formerly, they accepted implementations of any width. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.60 Released 2006-06-23, by Ralf Wildenhues. ** Autoconf no longer depends on whether m4wrap is FIFO (as Posix requires) or LIFO (as in GNU M4 1.4.x). GNU M4 2.0 is expected to conform to Posix here, so m4wrap/m4_wrap users should no longer depend on LIFO behavior. ** Provide a way to turn off warnings about the changed directory variables. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.59d Released 2006-06-05, by Ralf Wildenhues. ** GNU make now recommended for VPATH builds INSTALL now suggests VPATH builds (e.g., "sh ../srcdir/configure") only if you use GNU make. In practice, other 'make' implementations have too many subtle incompatibilities in their support for VPATH. Many packages (including Autoconf itself) are portable to other 'make' implementations, but some packages are not, and recommending GNU make keeps the installation instructions simpler. ** Even more safety checks for the new Directory variables: Warn about suspicious `${datarootdir}' found in config files output. ** AC_TRY_COMMAND, AC_TRY_EVAL, ac_config_guess, ac_config_sub, ac_configure These never-documented macros and variables have been marked with comments saying that they may be removed in a future release, because their use can lead to unintended code being executed. If you need functionality that only these macros or variables currently supply, please write bug-autoconf@gnu.org. ** AC_SUBST, AC_DEFINE Literal arguments to these are passed to m4_pattern_allow now. ** AC_PROG_CC_STDC Passing 'ac_cv_prog_cc_stdc=no' to 'configure' now sets ac_cv_prog_cc_c99 and ac_cv_prog_cc_c89 to 'no' as well, for backward compatibility with obsolete K&R tests in the Automake test suite. ** AC_PROG_CXX_C_O New macro. ** AC_PROG_MKDIR_P New macro. ** AS_MKDIR_P Now more robust with special characters in file names, or when multiple processes create the same directory at the same time. ** Obsolescent macros The documentation now says that the following macros are obsolescent: they test for problems that are so old that they are no longer of practical importance on current systems. AC_C_BACKSLASH_A AC_FUNC_MEMCMP AC_HEADER_DIRENT AC_C_CONST AC_FUNC_SELECT_ARGTYPES AC_HEADER_STAT AC_C_PROTOTYPES AC_FUNC_SETPGRP AC_HEADER_STDC AC_C_STRINGIZE AC_FUNC_SETVBUF_REVERSED AC_HEADER_SYS_WAIT AC_C_VOLATILE AC_FUNC_STAT AC_HEADER_TIME AC_FUNC_CLOSEDIR_VOID AC_FUNC_STRFTIME AC_ISC_POSIX AC_FUNC_GETPGRP AC_FUNC_UTIME_NULL AC_PROG_GCC_TRADITIONAL AC_FUNC_LSTAT AC_FUNC_VPRINTF AC_STRUCT_TM New programs need not use these macros. We have no current plans to remove them. ** autoreconf For compatibility with future Libtool 2.0, autoreconf will invoke libtoolize with the option `--ltdl' now, if LT_CONFIG_LTDL_DIR is used. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.59c Released 2006-04-12, by Ralf Wildenhues. ** The configure command now redirects standard input from /dev/null, to help avoid problems with subsidiary commands that might mistakenly read standard input. AS_ORIGINAL_STDIN_FD points to the original standard input before this redirection, if you really want configure to read from standard input. ** Directory variables adjusted to recent changes in the GNU Coding Standards. The following directory variables are new: datarootdir read-only architecture-independent data root [PREFIX/share] localedir locale-specific message catalogs [DATAROOTDIR/locale] docdir documentation root [DATAROOTDIR/doc/PACKAGE] htmldir html documentation [DOCDIR] dvidir dvi documentation [DOCDIR] pdfdir pdf documentation [DOCDIR] psdir ps documentation [DOCDIR] The following variables have new default values: datadir read-only architecture-independent data [DATAROOTDIR] infodir info documentation [DATAROOTDIR/info] mandir man documentation [DATAROOTDIR/man] This means that if you use any of `@datadir@', `@infodir@', or `@mandir@' in a file, you will have to ensure `${datarootdir}' is defined in this file. As a temporary measure, if any of those are found but no mention of `datarootdir', the substitutions will be replaced with values that do not contain `${datarootdir}', and a warning will be issued. ** @top_builddir@ is now a dir name: it is always nonempty and doesn't have a trailing slash. Similar change will be made to ac_top_builddir in a future release; the old style value, which matches (../)*, is (and will continue to be) available as ac_top_build_prefix. ** AC_C_TYPEOF New macro to check for support of 'typeof' syntax a la GNU C. ** AC_CHECK_DECLS_ONCE, AC_CHECK_FUNCS_ONCE, AC_CHECK_HEADERS_ONCE New "once-only" variants of commonly-used macros, to make 'configure' smaller and faster in common cases. ** AC_FUNC_STRTOLD New macro to check for strtold with C99 semantics. ** AC_HEADER_ASSERT New macro that lets builder disable assertions at 'configure'-time. ** AC_PATH_X Now checks for X11/Xlib.h and XrmInitialize (X proper) rather than X11/Intrinsic.h and XtMalloc (Xt). ** AC_PRESERVE_HELP_ORDER New macro that causes `configure' to display help strings for AC_ARG_ENABLE and AC_ARG_WITH arguments in one region, in the order defined. The default behavior is to group options of each classes separately. ** AC_PROG_CC, AC_PROG_CXX No longer automatically arrange to declare the 'exit' function of C, when a C++ compiler is used. Standard Autoconf macros no longer use 'exit', so this is no longer an issue for them. If you use C++, and want to call 'exit', you'll have to arrange for its declaration yourself. But we now suggest you return from 'main' instead. ** AC_PROG_CC_C89, AC_PROG_CC_C99 New macros for ISO C99 support. AC_PROG_CC_C89 and AC_PROG_CC_C99 check for ANSI C89 and ISO C99 support respectively. ** AC_PROG_CC_STDC Has been unobsoleted, and will check if the compiler supports ISO C99, falling back to ANSI C89 if not. ac_cv_prog_cc_stdc is retained for backwards compatibility, assuming the value of ac_cv_prog_cc_c99 or ac_cv_prog_cc_c89 (whichever is valid, in that order). ** AC_STRUCT_DIRENT_D_INO, AC_STRUCT_DIRENT_D_TYPE New macros for checking commonly-used members of struct dirent. ** AC_SUBST The substituted value can now contain newlines. ** AC_SUBST_FILE The substitution now occurs only when @variable@ is on a line by itself, optionally surrounded by spaces and tabs. The whole line is replaced. ** AC_TYPE_LONG_DOUBLE, AC_TYPE_LONG_DOUBLE_WIDER New macros to check for long double, and whether it is wider than double. The old macro AC_C_TYPE_LONG_DOUBLE has been marked as obsolete; applications should switch to the new macro. ** AC_TYPE_INT8_T, AC_TYPE_INT16_T, AC_TYPE_INT32_T, AC_TYPE_INT64_T, AC_TYPE_INTMAX_T, AC_TYPE_INTPTR_T, AC_TYPE_LONG_LONG_INT, AC_TYPE_SSIZE_T, AC_TYPE_UINT8_T, AC_TYPE_UINT16_T, AC_TYPE_UINT32_T, AC_TYPE_UINT64_T, AC_TYPE_UINTMAX_T, AC_TYPE_UINTPTR_T, AC_TYPE_UNSIGNED_LONG_LONG_INT New macros to check for C99 and POSIX types. ** AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS New macro to enable extensions to Posix. ** AH_HEADER New macro which is defined to the name of the first declared config header or undefined if no config headers have been declared yet. ** AS_HELP_STRING The macro correctly handles quadrigraphs now. ** AS_BOURNE_COMPATIBLE, AS_SHELL_SANITIZE, AS_CASE These macros are new or published now. ** AT_COPYRIGHT New macro for copyright notices in testsuite files. ** ALLOCA, LIBOBJS, LTLIBOBJS Object names added to these variables are now prefixed with `${LIBOBJDIR}', as in `${LIBOBJDIR}alloca.o'. LIBOBJDIR is meant to be defined from `Makefile.in' in case the object files lie in a different directory. The LIBOBJDIR feature is experimental. ** autoreconf Supports --no-recursive now. ** New macros to support Erlang/OTP. New macros for configuring paths to Erlang tools and libraries: AC_ERLANG_PATH_ERLC, AC_ERLANG_NEED_ERLC, AC_ERLANG_PATH_ERL, AC_ERLANG_NEED_ERL, AC_ERLANG_CHECK_LIB, AC_ERLANG_SUBST_ROOT_DIR, AC_ERLANG_SUBST_LIB_DIR. New macros for configuring installation of Erlang libraries: AC_ERLANG_SUBST_INSTALL_LIB_DIR, AC_ERLANG_SUBST_INSTALL_LIB_SUBDIR. ** The manual now mentions Gnulib more prominently. ** New macros to support Objective C. AC_PROG_OBJC, AC_PROG_OBJCPP. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.59b Released 2004-08-20, by Paul Eggert. ** AC_CHECK_ALIGNOF New macro that computes the default alignment of a type. ** AC_CHECK_TOOL, AC_PATH_TOOL, AC_CHECK_TOOLS When cross-compiling, these macros will give a warning if the tool is not prefixed. In the future, unprefixed cross tools will not be detected; please consult the info documentation for information about the reason of this change. ** AC_CHECK_TARGET_TOOL, AC_PATH_TARGET_TOOL, AC_CHECK_TARGET_TOOLS New macros that detect programs whose name is prefixed with the target type, if the build type and target type are different. ** AC_REQUIRE_AUX_FILE New trace macro that declares expected auxiliary files. ** AC_PROG_GREP New macro that tests for a grep program that accepts as a long a line as possible. ** AC_PROG_EGREP, AC_PROG_FGREP These macros now require AC_PROG_GREP, and try EGREP="$GREP -E" and FGREP="$GREP -F" respectively if possible, or else run a path search for a program that accepts as long a line as possible. ** AC_PROG_SED New macro that tests for a sed program that truncates as few characters as possible. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.59 Released 2003-11-04, by Akim Demaille ** ac_abs_builddir etc. Absolute file names were actually relative in 2.58. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.58 Released 2003-11-04, by Akim Demaille ** core.* core.* files are no longer removed, as they may be valid user files. ** autoreconf and auxiliary directory Autoreconf creates the auxiliary directory if needed. This is especially useful for initial "bootstrapping" of fresh CVS checkouts. ** AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR Use this macro to declare the directory for local M4 macros for aclocal. ** AC_LIBOBJS No longer includes twice the same file in LIBOBJS if invoked multiple times. ** AC_CONFIG_COMMANDS The directory for its first argument is automatically created. For instance, with AC_CONFIG_COMMANDS([src/modules.hh], [...]) $top_builddir/src/ is created if needed. ** Autotest and local.at The optional file local.at is always included in Autotest test suites. ** Warnings The warnings are always issued, including with cached runs. This became a significant problem since aclocal and automake can run autoconf behind the scene. ** autoheader warnings The warnings of autoheader can be turned off, using --warning. For instance, -Wno-obsolete disables the complaints about acconfig.h and other deprecated constructs. ** New macros AC_C_RESTRICT, AC_INCLUDES_DEFAULT, AC_LANG_ASSERT, AC_LANG_WERROR, AS_SET_CATFILE. ** AC_DECL_SYS_SIGLIST Works again. ** AC_FUNC_MKTIME Now checks that mktime is the inverse of localtime. ** Improve DJGPP portability The Autoconf tools and configure behave better under DJGPP. ** Present But Cannot Be Compiled New FAQ section dedicated to the mystic configure: WARNING: pi.h: present but cannot be compiled configure: WARNING: pi.h: check for missing prerequisite headers? configure: WARNING: pi.h: proceeding with the preprocessor's result messages. ** Concurrent executions of autom4te autom4te now locks its internal files, which enables concurrent executions of autom4te, likely to happen if automake, autoconf, autoheader etc. are run simultaneously. ** Libtool Use of Libtool 1.5 and higher is encouraged. Compatibility with Libtool pre-1.4 is not checked. ** Autotest Testsuites no longer rerun failed tests in verbose mode; instead, failures are logged while the test is run. In addition, expected failures can be marked as such. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.57 Released 2002-12-03 by Paul Eggert. Bug fixes for problems with AIX linker, with freestanding C compilers, with GNU M4 limitations, and with obsolete copies of GNU documents. The Free Documentation License has been upgraded from 1.1 to 1.2. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.56 Released 2002-11-15 by Akim Demaille. One packaging problem fixed (config/install-sh was not executable). * Major changes in Autoconf 2.55 Released 2002-11-14 by Akim Demaille. 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_PROGRAM 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. ** config.status Supports --quiet. ** 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. - AC_DEFINE/AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED We have to stop using the old compatibility scheme --that tried to avoid useless backslashes-- because Libtool 1.4.3 contains a AC_DEFINE([error_t], [int], [Define to a type to use for \`error_t' if it is not otherwise available.]) We have to quote the single quotes and backslashes with \. The old compatibility scheme saw that ` was backslashed, and therefore did not quote the single quote... Failure. Hence, Autoconf 2.54 is not compatible with Libtool. Autoconf 2.55 is, but in some cases might produce more \ than wanted. Please, note that in the future the same problem will happen with AC_MSG_*: use `autoreconf -f -Wall'. ** 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 later versions - ./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 bug-autoconf@gnu.org. - AC_MSG_* Special characters in AC_MSG_* need not be quoted. Currently, Autoconf has heuristics to decide when a string is escaped, or has to be escaped. This scheme is fragile, and will be removed; the only risk is uglified messages. Please, run `autoreconf -f -Wall' to find occurrences that will be affected. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.54 Released 2002-09-13 by Akim Demaille. ** Executables - autoreconf no longer changes the version of the gettext/po/intl support files. It now adds the files the correspond to the AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION declared in configure.ac. Warning: It now relies on the 'autopoint' program, which is part of GNU gettext 0.11.4 and newer. Please note that you need to have a GNU gettext version that corresponds at least to the AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION declared in configure.ac. You can upgrade to newer GNU gettext versions, though, without needing to change configure.ac. - The -I DIR or --include=DIR option now appends DIR to the include path instead of prepending; this is for consistency with other GNU tools. The new -B DIR or --prepend-include=DIR option has the old behavior. ** Macros - AC_OUTPUT Now handles all the gory details about LIBOBJS and LTLIBOBJS. Please, remove lines such as # This is necessary so that .o files in LIBOBJS are also # built via the ANSI2KNR-filtering rules. LIBOBJS=`echo $LIBOBJS|sed 's/\.o /\$U.o /g;s/\.o$/\$U.o/'` and read the `AC_LIBOBJ vs LIBOBJS' section. Do not define U in your Makefiles either. - AC_CONFIG_LINKS now makes copies if it can't make links. - AC_FUNC_FNMATCH now tests only for POSIX compatibility, reverting to Autoconf 2.13 behavior. The new macro AC_FUNC_FNMATCH_GNU also tests for GNU extensions to fnmatch, and replaces fnmatch if needed. - AC_FUNC_SETVBUF_REVERSED no longer fails when cross-compiling. - AC_PROG_CC_STDC is integrated into AC_PROG_CC. - AC_PROG_F77 default search no longer includes cf77 and cfg77. - New macros AC_C_BACKSLASH_A, AC_CONFIG_LIBOBJ_DIR, AC_GNU_SOURCE, AC_PROG_EGREP, AC_PROG_FGREP, AC_REPLACE_FNMATCH, AC_FUNC_FNMATCH_GNU, AC_FUNC_REALLOC, AC_TYPE_MBSTATE_T. - AC_FUNC_GETLOADAVG looks for getloadavg.c in the CONFIG_LIBOBJ_DIR. - AC_FUNC_MALLOC Now defines HAVE_MALLOC to 0 if `malloc' does not work, and asks for an AC_LIBOBJ replacement. ** Bug fixes - Spurious complaints from `m4_bmatch' about invalid regular expressions are suppressed. - Empty top_builddirs are properly handled. - AC_CHECK_MEMBER works correctly when the member is an aggregate. - AC_PATH_PROG Now colon in the optional path arguments are properly handled. ** Improved portability - Both Autoconf the package, and the scripts it produces, should run more reliably with Zsh. Bear in mind it is the default Bourne shell on Darwin. - Autoconf and the scripts it produces no longer assume the existence of the obsolescent commands egrep and fgrep. ** Documentation - Limitations of Make More of them. - GNATS The GNATS base moved to http://bugs.gnu.org/cgi-bin/gnatsweb.pl?database=autoconf (It is no longer available, though.) ** Misc. - config.log Now contains the list of output variables and files (AC_SUBST, AC_SUBST_FILES). * Major changes in Autoconf 2.53 Released 2002-03-08 by Akim Demaille. ** Requirements Perl 5.005_03 or later is required: autom4te is written in Perl and is needed by autoconf. autoheader, autoreconf, ifnames, and autoscan are rewritten in Perl. ** Documentation - AC_INIT Argument requirements, output variables, defined macros. - M4sugar, M4sh, Autotest First sketch. - Double quoting macros AC_TRY_CPP, AC_TRY_COMPILE, AC_TRY_LINK and AC_TRY_RUN. - Licensing The Autoconf manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL. - Section `Hosts and Cross-Compilation' Explains the rationale for the 2.5x changes in the cross-compilation chain, and in the relationships between build, host, and target types. Emphasizes that `cross-compilation' == `--host is given'. If you are working on compilers etc., be sure to read this section. - Section `AC_LIBOBJ vs. LIBOBJS' Explains why assigning LIBOBJS directly is now an error. Details how to update the code. ** configure - $LINENO Now used instead of hard coded line numbers. This eases the comparison of `configure's, and diminishes the pressure over control version archives. Automatic replacement for shells that don't support this feature. - New output variables @builddir@, @top_builddir@, @abs_srcdir@, @abs_top_srcdir@, @abs_builddir@, @abs_top_builddir@. ** Emacs Autoconf and Autotest modes are provided. ** Executables - autom4te New, used by the Autoconf suite to cache and speed up most processing. - --force, -f Supported by autom4te, autoconf and autoheader. - --include, -I Replaces --autoconf-dir and --localdir in autoconf, autoheader, autoupdate, and autoreconf. - autoreconf No longer passes --cygnus, --foreign, --gnits, --gnu, --include-deps: automake options are to be given via AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS. - autoreconf Runs gettextize and libtoolize when appropriate. - autoreconf --m4dir is no longer supported. - autoreconf Now runs only in the specified directories, defaulting to `.', but understands AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS for dependent directories. Before, it used to run on all the `configure.ac' found in the current tree. Independent packages are properly updated. ** Bug fixes - The top level $prefix is propagated to the AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS configures. - AC_TRY_RUN Under the user pressure, $? is finally available. Probably a mistake. - AC_F77_LIBRARY_LDFLAGS now supports the HP/UX f90 compiler. - Precious variables accumulation config.status could stack several copies of the precious variables assignments. - AC_PATH_PROG and family. Works properly when given a literal path. - AC_FUNC_SETPGRP Somewhere since 2.13, the result had been reversed. ** C Macros - AC_C_BIGENDIAN supports the cross-compiling case. - AC_C_BIGENDIAN accepts ACTION-IF-TRUE, ACTION-IF-FALSE, and ACTION-IF-UNKNOWN arguments. All are optional, and the default for ACTION-IF-TRUE is to define WORDS_BIGENDIAN like AC_C_BIGENDIAN always did. - AC_C_LONG_DOUBLE now succeeds only if `long double' has more range or precision than `double'. ** Generic macros - AC_INIT It now defines the preprocessor symbols PACKAGE_NAME, PACKAGE_TARNAME, PACKAGE_VERSION, PACKAGE_STRING, and PACKAGE_BUGREPORT. - AC_INIT Admits a fourth optional parameter: the tar name. - AC_CONFIG_COMMANDS, HEADERS, FILES, LINKS. Provide the user with srcdir, ac_srcdir, ac_top_srcdir, ac_builddir, ac_top_builddir, ac_abs_srcdir, ac_abs_top_srcdir, ac_abs_builddir, ac_abs_top_builddir. - AC_CONFIG_COMMANDS, HEADERS, FILES, LINKS and AC_OUTPUT. Are much less expensive when using long lists of files. - AC_PREFIX_PROGRAM Works with shell variables, and non alphanumeric names. ** Library macros - AC_FUNC_STRERROR_R now sets STRERROR_R_CHAR_P, not HAVE_WORKING_STRERROR_R, because POSIX 1003.1-200x draft 7 says strerror_r returns int, not char *. - AC_FUNC_STRTOD substitutes POW_LIB. - AC_FUNC_STRNLEN New. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.52 Released 2001-07-18 by Akim Demaille. ** Documentation - AC_ARG_VAR - Quadrigraphs This feature was present in autoconf 2.50 but was not documented. For example, `@<:@' is translated to `[' just before output. This is useful when writing strings that contain unbalanced quotes, or other hard-to-quote constructs. - m4_pattern_forbid, m4_pattern_allow - Tips for upgrading from 2.13. - Using autoscan to maintain a configure.ac. ** Default includes - Now include stdint.h. - sys/types.h and sys/stat.h are guarded. - strings.h is included if available, and not conflicting with string.h. ** Bug fixes - The test suite is more robust and presents less false failures. - Invocation of GNU M4 now robust to POSIXLY_CORRECT. - configure accepts --prefix='' again. - AC_CHECK_LIB works properly when its first argument is not a literal. - HAVE_INTTYPES_H is defined only if not conflicting with sys/types.h. - build_, host_, and target_alias are AC_SUBST as in 2.13. - AC_ARG_VAR properly propagates precious variables inherited from the environment to ./config.status. - Using --program-suffix/--program-prefix is portable. - Failures to detect the default compiler's output extension are less likely. - `config.status foo' works properly when `foo' depends on variables set in an AC_CONFIG_THING INIT-CMD. - autoheader is more robust to broken input. - Fixed Fortran name-mangling and link tests on a number of systems, e.g. NetBSD; see AC_F77_DUMMY_MAIN, below. ** Generic macros - AC_CHECK_HEADER and AC_CHECK_HEADERS support a fourth argument to specify pre-includes. In this case, the headers are compiled with cc, not merely preprocessed by cpp. Therefore it is the _usability_ of a header which is checked for, not just its availability. - AC_ARG_VAR refuses to run configure when precious variables have changed. - Versions of compilers are dumped in the logs. - AC_CHECK_TYPE recognizes use of `foo_t' as a replacement type. ** Specific Macros - AC_PATH_XTRA only adds -ldnet to $LIBS if it's needed to link. - AC_FUNC_WAIT3 and AC_SYS_RESTARTABLE_SYSCALLS are obsoleted. - AM_FUNC_ERROR_AT_LINE, AM_FUNC_FNMATCH, AM_FUNC_MKTIME, AM_FUNC_OBSTACK, and AM_FUNC_STRTOD are now activated. Be sure to read `Upgrading from Version 2.13' to understand why running `autoupdate' is needed. - AC_F77_DUMMY_MAIN, AC_F77_MAIN: new macros to detect whether a main-like routine is required/possible when linking C/C++ with Fortran. Users of e.g. AC_F77_WRAPPERS should be aware of these. - AC_FUNC_GETPGRG behaves better when cross-compiling. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.51 There was no release of Autoconf 2.51 since some packagers had used this version number without permission to ship intermediary versions of 2.50. The version was skipped to avoid confusion. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.50 Released 2001-05-21 by Akim Demaille. ** Lots of bug fixes There have been far too many to enumerate them here. Check out ChangeLog if you really want to know more. ** Improved documentation In particular, portability issues are better covered. ** Use of Automake All the standard GNU Makefile targets are supported. The layout has changed: m4/ holds the M4 extensions Autoconf needs for its configuration, doc/ contains the documentation, and tests/ contains the test suite. ** Man pages are provided For autoconf, autoreconf, autoupdate, autoheader, autoscan, ifnames, config.guess, config.sub. ** autoconf - --trace Provides a safe and powerful means to trace the macro uses. This provide the parsing layer for tools which need to `study' configure.in. - --warnings Specify what category of warnings should be enabled. - When recursing into subdirectories, try for configure.gnu before configure to adapt for packages not using autoconf on case-insensitive file systems. - Diagnostics More errors are now caught (circular AC_REQUIRE dependencies, AC_DEFINE in the action part of an AC_CACHE_CHECK, too many pops etc.). In addition, their location and call stack are given. ** autoupdate autoupdate is much more powerful, and is able to provide the glue code which might be needed to move from an old macro to its newer equivalent. You are strongly encouraged to use it to modernize both your `configure.in' and your .m4 extension files. ** autoheader The internal machinery of autoheader has completely changed. As a result, using `acconfig.h' should be considered to be obsoleted, and you are encouraged to get rid of it using the AH macros. ** autoreconf Extensive overhaul. ** Fortran 77 compilers Globally, the support for Fortran 77 is considerably improved. Support for automatically determining a Fortran 77 compiler's name-mangling scheme. New CPP macros F77_FUNC and F77_FUNC_ are provided to wrap C/C++ identifiers, thus making it easier and more transparent for C/C++ to call Fortran 77 routines, and Fortran 77 to call C/C++ routines. See the Texinfo documentation for details. ** Test suite The test suite no longer uses DejaGNU. It should be easy to submit test cases in this new framework. ** configure - --help, --help=long, -hl no longer dumps useless items. - --help=short, -hs lists only specific options. - --help=recursive, -hr displays the help of all the embedded packages. - Remembers environment variables when reconfiguring. The previous scheme to set envvar before running configure was ENV=VAL ./configure what prevented configure from remembering the environment in which it was run, therefore --recheck was run in an inconsistent environment. Now, one should run ./configure ENV=VAR and then --recheck will work properly. Variables declared with AC_ARG_VAR are also preserved. - cross-compilation $build defaults to `config.guess`, $host to $build, and then $target to $host. Cross-compilation is a global status of the package, it no longer depends upon the current language. Cross compilation is enabled iff the user specified `--host'. `configure' now fails if it can't run the executables it compiles, unless cross-compilation is enabled. - Cache file The cache file is disabled by default. The new options `--config-cache', `-C' set the cache to `config.cache'. ** config.status - faster Much faster on most architectures. - concurrent executions It is safe to use `make -j' with config.status. - human interface improved It is possible to invoke ./config.status foobar instead of the former form (still valid) CONFIG_COMMANDS= CONFIG_HEADERS= CONFIG_LINKS= \ CONFIG_FILES=foobar:foo.in:bar.in \ ./config.status The same holds for configuration headers and links. You can instantiate unknown files and headers: ./config.status --header foo.h:foo.h.in --file bar:baz - has a useful --help - accepts special file name "-" for stdin/stdout ** Identity Macros - AC_COPYRIGHT Specify additional copyright information. - AC_INIT Now expects the identity of the package as argument. ** General changes. - Uniform quotation Most macros, if not all, now strictly follow the `one quotation level' rule. This results in a more predictable expansion. - AC_REQUIRE A sly bug in the AC_REQUIRE machinery, which could produce incorrect configure scripts, was fixed by Axel Thimm. ** Setup Macros - AC_ARG_VAR Document and ask for the registration of an envvar. - AC_CONFIG_SRCDIR Specifies the file which `configure' should look for when trying to find the source tree (used to be handled by AC_INIT). - AC_CONFIG_COMMANDS To add new actions to config.status. Should be used instead of AC_OUTPUT_COMMANDS. - AC_CONFIG_LINKS Replaces AC_LINK_FILES. - AC_CONFIG_HEADERS, AC_CONFIG_COMMANDS, AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS, AC_CONFIG_LINKS, and AC_CONFIG_FILES They now obey sh: you should no longer use shell variables as argument. Instead of test "$package_foo_enabled" = yes && $my_subdirs="$my_subdirs foo" AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS($my_subdirs) write if test "$package_foo_enabled" = yes; then AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS(foo) fi - AC_HELP_STRING To format an Autoconf macro's help string so that it looks pretty when the user executes `configure --help'. ** Generic Test Macros - AC_CHECK families The interface of the AC_CHECK families of macros (decl, header, type, member, func) is now uniform. They support the same set of default includes. - AC_CHECK_DECL, AC_CHECK_DECLS To check whether a symbol is declared. - AC_CHECK_SIZEOF, AC_C_CHAR_UNSIGNED. No longer need a cross-compilation default. - AC_CHECK_TYPE The test it performs is much more robust than previously, and makes it possible to test builtin types in addition to typedefs. It is now schizophrenic: - AC_CHECK_TYPE(TYPE, REPLACEMENT) remains for backward compatibility, but its use is discouraged. - AC_CHECK_TYPE(TYPE, IF-FOUND, IF-NOT-FOUND, INCLUDES) behaves exactly like the other AC_CHECK macros. - AC_CHECK_TYPES Checks whether given types are supported by the system. - AC_CHECK_MEMBER, AC_CHECK_MEMBERS Check for given members in aggregates (e.g., pw_gecos in struct passwd). - AC_PROG_CC_STDC Checks if the compiler supports ISO C, included when needs special options. - AC_PROG_CPP Checking whether the preprocessor indicates missing includes by the error code. stderr is checked by AC_TRY_CPP only as a fallback. - AC_LANG Takes a language as argument and replaces AC_LANG_C, AC_LANG_CPLUSPLUS and AC_LANG_FORTRAN77. - AC_LANG_PUSH, AC_LANG_POP Are preferred to AC_LANG_SAVE, AC_LANG_RESTORE. ** Specific Macros - AC_FUNC_CHOWN, AC_FUNC_MALLOC, AC_FUNC_STRERROR_R, AC_FUNC_LSTAT_FOLLOWS_SLASHED_SYMLINK, AC_FUNC_STAT, AC_FUNC_LSTAT, AC_FUNC_ERROR_AT_LINE, AC_FUNC_OBSTACK, AC_FUNC_STRTOD, AC_FUNC_FSEEKO. New. - AC_FUNC_GETGROUPS Sets GETGROUPS_LIBS. - AC_FUNC_GETLOADAVG Defines `HAVE_STRUCT_NLIST_N_UN_N_NAME' instead of `NLIST_NAME_UNION'. - AC_PROG_LEX Now integrates `AC_DECL_YYTEXT' which is obsoleted. - AC_SYS_LARGEFILE Arrange for large-file support. - AC_EXEEXT, AC_OBJEXT You are no longer expected to use them: their computation is performed by default. ** C++ compatibility Every macro has been revisited in order to support at best CC=c++. Major changes in Autoconf 2.14: There was no release of GNU Autoconf 2.14. Major changes in Autoconf 2.13: Released 1999-05-01 by Ben Elliston. * Support for building on 32-bit Windows systems where the only available C or C++ compiler is the Microsoft Visual C++ command line compiler (`cl'). Additional support for building on 32-bit Windows systems which are using the Cygwin or Mingw32 environments. * Support for alternative object file and executable file extensions. On 32-bit Windows, for example, these are .obj and .exe. These are discovered using AC_OBJEXT and AC_EXEEXT, which substitute @OBJEXT@ and @EXEEXT@ in the output, respectively. * New macros: AC_CACHE_LOAD, AC_CACHE_SAVE, AC_FUNC_SELECT_ARGTYPES, AC_VALIDATE_CACHED_SYSTEM_TUPLE, AC_SEARCH_LIBS, AC_TRY_LINK_FUNC, AC_C_STRINGIZE, AC_CHECK_FILE(S), AC_PROG_F77 (and friends). * AC_DEFINE now has an optional third argument for a description to be placed in the config header input file (e.g. config.h.in). * The C++ code fragment compiled for the C++ compiler test had to be improved to include an explicit return type for main(). This was causing failures on systems using recent versions of the EGCS C++ compiler. * Fixed an important bug in AC_CHECK_TYPE that would cause a configure script to report that `sometype_t' was present when only `type_t' was defined. * Merge of the FSF version of config.guess and config.sub to modernize these scripts. Add support for a few new hosts in config.guess. Incorporate latest versions of install-sh, mkinstalldirs and texinfo.tex from the FSF. * autoreconf is capable of running automake if necessary (and applicable). * Support for Fortran 77. See the Texinfo documentation for details. * Bug fixes and workarounds for quirky bugs in vendor utilities. Major changes in Autoconf 2.12: Released 1996-11-26 by David J. MacKenzie * AC_OUTPUT and AC_CONFIG_HEADER can create output files by concatenating multiple input files separated by colons, like so: AC_CONFIG_HEADER(config.h:conf.pre:config.h.in:conf.post) AC_OUTPUT(Makefile:Makefile.in:Makefile.rules) The arguments may be shell variables, to compute the lists on the fly. * AC_LINK_FILES and AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS may be called multiple times. * New macro AC_OUTPUT_COMMANDS adds more commands to run in config.status. * Bug fixes. Major changes in Autoconf 2.11: Released November 18th, 1996, by David J. MacKenzie * AC_PROG_CC and AC_PROG_CXX check whether the compiler works. They also default CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS to "-g -O2" for gcc, instead of "-g -O". * AC_REPLACE_FUNCS defines HAVE_foo if the system has the function `foo'. * AC_CONFIG_HEADER expands shell variables in its argument. * New macros: AC_FUNC_FNMATCH, AC_FUNC_SETPGRP. * The "checking..." messages and the source code for test programs that fail are saved in config.log. * Another workaround has been added for seds with small command length limits. * config.sub and config.guess recognize more system types. * Bug fixes. Major changes in Autoconf 2.10: Released May 7th, 1996, by Roland McGrath * Bug fixes. * The cache variable names used by `AC_CHECK_LIB(LIB, FUNC, ...)' has changed: now $ac_cv_lib_LIB_FUNC, previously $ac_cv_lib_LIB. Major changes in Autoconf 2.9: Released March 16th, 1996, by Roland McGrath * Bug fixes. Major changes in Autoconf 2.8: Released March 8th, 1996, by Roland McGrath * Bug fixes. Major changes in Autoconf 2.7: Released November 22nd, 1995, by David J. MacKenzie * Bug fixes. Major changes in Autoconf 2.6: Released November 20th, 1995, by David J. MacKenzie * Bug fixes. Major changes in Autoconf 2.5: Released November 17th, 1995, by Roland McGrath * New configure options --bindir, --libdir, --datadir, etc., with corresponding output variables. * New macro: AC_CACHE_CHECK, to make using the cache easier. * config.log contains the command being run as well as any output from it. * AC_CHECK_LIB can check for libraries with "." or "/" or "+" in their name. * AC_PROG_INSTALL doesn't cache a name for install-sh, for sharing caches. * AC_CHECK_PROG, AC_PATH_PROG, AC_CHECK_PROGS, AC_PATH_PROGS, and AC_CHECK_TOOL can search a path other than $PATH. * AC_CHECK_SIZEOF takes an optional size to use when cross-compiling. Major changes in Autoconf 2.4: Released June 14th, 1995, by David J. MacKenzie * Fix a few bugs found by Emacs testers. Major changes in Autoconf 2.3: Released March 27th, 1995, by David J. MacKenzie * Fix the cleanup trap in several ways. * Handle C compilers that are picky about option placement. * ifnames gets the version number from the right directory. Major changes in Autoconf 2.2: Released March 8th, 1995, by David J. MacKenzie * The ifnames utility is much faster but requires a "new awk" interpreter. * AC_CHECK_LIB and AC_HAVE_LIBRARY check and add the new library before existing libs, not after, in case it uses them. * New macros: AC_FUNC_GETPGRP, AC_CHECK_TOOL. * Lots of bug fixes. * Many additions to the TODO file :-) Major changes in Autoconf 2.1: Released November 4th, 1994, by David J. MacKenzie * Fix C++ problems. * More explanations in the manual. * Fix a spurious failure in the testsuite. * Clarify some warning messages. * autoreconf by default only rebuilds configure and config.h.in files that are older than any of their particular input files; there is a --force option to use after installing a new version of Autoconf. Thanks to everybody who's submitted changes and additions to Autoconf! I've incorporated many of them, and am still considering others for future releases -- but I didn't want to postpone this release indefinitely. Caution: don't indiscriminately rebuild configure scripts with Autoconf version 2. Some configure.in files need minor adjustments to work with it; the documentation has a chapter on upgrading. A few configure.in files, including those for GNU Emacs and the GNU C Library, need major changes because they relied on undocumented internals of version 1. Future releases of those packages will have updated configure.in files. It's best to use GNU M4 1.3 (or later) with Autoconf version 2. Autoconf now makes heavy use of M4 diversions, which were implemented inefficiently in GNU M4 releases before 1.3. Major changes in Autoconf 2.0: Released October 26th, 1994, by David J. MacKenzie ** New copyright terms: * There are no restrictions on distribution or use of configure scripts. ** Documentation: * Autoconf manual is reorganized to make information easier to find and has several new indexes. * INSTALL is reorganized and clearer and is now made from Texinfo source. ** New utilities: * autoscan to generate a preliminary configure.in for a package by scanning its source code for commonly used nonportable functions, programs, and header files. * ifnames to list the symbols used in #if and #ifdef directives in a source tree. * autoupdate to update a configure.in to use the version 2 macro names. * autoreconf to recursively remake configure and configuration header files in a source tree. ** Changed utilities: * autoheader can take pieces of acconfig.h to replace config.h.{top,bot}. * autoconf and autoheader can look for package-local definition files in an alternate directory. ** New macros: * AC_CACHE_VAL to share results of tests between configure runs. * AC_DEFUN to define macros, automatically AC_PROVIDE them, and ensure that macros invoked with AC_REQUIRE don't interrupt other macros. * AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR, AC_CANONICAL_SYSTEM, AC_CANONICAL_HOST, AC_LINK_FILES to support deciding unguessable features based on the host and target types. * AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS to recursively configure a source tree. * AC_ARG_PROGRAM to use the options --program-prefix, --program-suffix, and --program-transform-name to change the names of programs being installed. * AC_PREFIX_DEFAULT to change the default installation prefix. * AC_TRY_COMPILE to compile a test program without linking it. * AC_CHECK_TYPE to check whether sys/types.h or stdlib.h defines a given type. * AC_CHECK_LIB to check for a particular function and library. * AC_MSG_CHECKING and AC_MSG_RESULT to print test results, on a single line, whether or not the test succeeds. They obsolete AC_CHECKING and AC_VERBOSE. * AC_SUBST_FILE to insert one file into another. * AC_FUNC_MEMCMP to check whether memcmp is 8-bit clean. * AC_FUNC_STRFTIME to find strftime even if it's in -lintl. * AC_FUNC_GETMNTENT to find getmntent even if it's in -lsun or -lseq. * AC_HEADER_SYS_WAIT to check whether sys/wait.h is POSIX.1 compatible. ** Changed macros: * Many macros renamed systematically, but old names are accepted for backward compatibility. * AC_OUTPUT adds the "automatically generated" comment to non-Makefiles where it finds @configure_input@ in an input file, to support files with various comment syntaxes. * AC_OUTPUT does not replace "prefix" and "exec_prefix" in generated files when they are not enclosed in @ signs. * AC_OUTPUT allows the optional environment variable CONFIG_STATUS to override the file name "config.status". * AC_OUTPUT takes an optional argument for passing variables from configure to config.status. * AC_OUTPUT and AC_CONFIG_HEADER allow you to override the input-file names. * AC_OUTPUT automatically substitutes the values of CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS, CPPFLAGS, and LDFLAGS from the environment. * AC_PROG_CC and AC_PROG_CXX now set CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS, respectively. * AC_PROG_INSTALL looks for install-sh or install.sh in the directory specified by AC_CONFIG_AUXDIR, or srcdir or srcdir/.. or srcdir/../.. by default. * AC_DEFINE, AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED, and AC_SUBST are more robust and smaller. * AC_DEFINE no longer prints anything, because of the new result reporting mechanism (AC_MSG_CHECKING and AC_MSG_RESULT). * AC_VERBOSE pays attention to --quiet/--silent, not --verbose. * AC_ARG_ENABLE and AC_ARG_WITH support whitespace in the arguments to --enable- and --with- options. * AC_CHECK_FUNCS and AC_CHECK_HEADERS take optional shell commands to execute on success or failure. * Checking for C functions in C++ works. ** Removed macros: * AC_REMOTE_TAPE and AC_RSH removed; too specific to tar and cpio, and better maintained with them. * AC_ARG_ARRAY removed because no one was likely using it. * AC_HAVE_POUNDBANG replaced with AC_SYS_INTERPRETER, which doesn't take arguments, for consistency with all of the other specific checks. ** New files: * Comes with config.sub and config.guess, and uses them optionally. * Uses config.cache to cache test results. An alternate cache file can be selected with the --cache-file=FILE option. * Uses optional shell scripts $prefix/share/config.site and $prefix/etc/config.site to perform site or system specific initializations. * configure saves compiler output to ./config.log for debugging. * New files autoconf.m4 and autoheader.m4 load the other Autoconf macros. * acsite.m4 is the new name for the system-wide aclocal.m4. * Has a DejaGnu test suite. Major changes in Autoconf 1.11: * AC_PROG_INSTALL calls install.sh with the -c option. * AC_SET_MAKE cleans up after itself. * AC_OUTPUT sets prefix and exec_prefix if they weren't set already. * AC_OUTPUT prevents shells from looking in PATH for config.status. Plus a few other bug fixes. Major changes in Autoconf 1.10: * autoheader uses config.h.bot if present, analogous to config.h.top. * AC_PROG_INSTALL looks for install.sh in srcdir or srcdir/.. and never uses cp. * AC_PROG_CXX looks for cxx as a C++ compiler. Plus several bugs fixed. Major changes in Autoconf 1.9: * AC_YYTEXT_POINTER replaces AC_DECLARE_YYTEXT. * AC_SIZEOF_TYPE generates the cpp symbol name automatically, and autoheader generates entries for those names automatically. * AC_FIND_X gets the result from xmkmf correctly. * AC_FIND_X assumes no X if --without-x was given. * AC_FIND_XTRA adds libraries to the variable X_EXTRA_LIBS. * AC_PROG_INSTALL finds OSF/1 installbsd. Major changes in Autoconf 1.8: ** New macros: * New macros AC_LANG_C, AC_LANG_CPLUSPLUS, AC_LANG_SAVE, AC_LANG_RESTORE, AC_PROG_CXX, AC_PROG_CXXCPP, AC_REQUIRE_CPP for checking both C++ and C features in one configure script. * New macros AC_CHECKING, AC_VERBOSE, AC_WARN, AC_ERROR for printing messages. * New macros AC_FIND_XTRA, AC_MMAP, AC_SIZEOF_TYPE, AC_PREREQ, AC_SET_MAKE, AC_ENABLE. ** Changed macros: * AC_FIND_X looks for X in more places. * AC_PROG_INSTALL defaults to install.sh instead of cp, if it's in srcdir. install.sh is distributed with Autoconf. * AC_DECLARE_YYTEXT has been removed because it can't work, pending a rewrite of quoting in AC_DEFINE. * AC_OUTPUT adds its comments in C format when substituting in C files. * AC_COMPILE_CHECK protects its ECHO-TEXT argument with double quotes. ** New or changed command line options: * configure accepts --enable-FEATURE[=ARG] and --disable-FEATURE options. * configure accepts --without-PACKAGE, which sets withval=no. * configure accepts --x-includes=DIR and --x-libraries=DIR. * Giving --with-PACKAGE no argument sets withval=yes instead of withval=1. * configure accepts --help, --version, --silent/--quiet, --no-create options. * configure accepts and ignores most other Cygnus configure options, and warns about unknown options. * config.status accepts --help, --version options. ** File names and other changes: * Relative srcdir values are not made absolute. * The values of @prefix@ and @exec_prefix@ and @top_srcdir@ get substituted. * Autoconf library files are installed in ${datadir}/autoconf, not ${datadir}. * autoheader optionally copies config.h.top to the beginning of config.h.in. * The example Makefile dependencies for configure et al. work better. * Namespace cleanup: all shell variables used internally by Autoconf have names beginning with `ac_'. More big improvements are in process for future releases, but have not yet been (variously) finished, integrated, tested, or documented enough to release yet. Major changes in Autoconf 1.7: * New macro AC_OBSOLETE. * Bugs in Makefile.in fixed. * AC_LONG_FILE_NAMES improved. Major changes in Autoconf 1.6: * New macro AC_LONG_64_BITS. * Multiple .h files can be created. * AC_FIND_X looks for X files directly if it doesn't find xmkmf. * AC_ALLOCA defines C_ALLOCA if using alloca.c. * --with-NAME can take a value, e.g., --with-targets=sun4,hp300bsd. * Unused --no-create option to configure removed. * autoheader doesn't change the timestamp of its output file if the file didn't change. * All macros that look for libraries now use AC_HAVE_LIBRARY. * config.status checks three optional environment variables to modify its behavior. * The usual bug fixes. Major changes in Autoconf 1.5: * New macros AC_FIND_X, AC_OFF_T, AC_STAT_MACROS_BROKEN, AC_REVISION. * autoconf and autoheader scripts have GNU standards conforming --version and --help options (they print their message and exit). * Many bug fixes. Major changes in Autoconf 1.4: * New macros AC_HAVE_POUNDBANG, AC_TIME_WITH_SYS_TIME, AC_LONG_DOUBLE, AC_GETGROUPS_T, AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED. * autoconf and autoheader use the M4 environment variable to determine the name of the M4 program to use. * The --macrodir option to autoconf and autoheader specifies the directory in which acspecific.m4, acgeneral.m4, etc. reside if not the default. * autoconf and autoheader can take `-' as their file names, which means to read stdin as input. * Resulting configure scripts can take a --verbose option which causes them to print the results of their tests. * AC_DEFINE quotes its second argument in such a way that spaces, magic shell characters, etc. will be preserved during various stages of expansion done by the shell. If you don't want this, use AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED instead. * Much textual processing done with external calls to tr and sed have been internalized with builtin M4 `patsubst' and `translit' calls. * AC_OUTPUT doesn't hardwire the file names it outputs. Instead, you can set the shell variables `gen_files' and `gen_config' to the list of file names to output. * AC_DECLARE_YYTEXT does an AC_SUBST of `LEX_OUTPUT_ROOT', which may be "lex.yy" or "lexyy", depending on the system. * AC_PROGRAMS_CHECK takes an optional third arg. If given, it is used as the default value. * If AC_ALLOCA chooses alloca.c, it also defines STACK_DIRECTION. * AC_CONST works much more reliably on more systems. * Many bug fixes. Major changes in Autoconf 1.3: configure no longer requires awk for packages that use a config.h. Support handling --with-PACKAGE options. New `autoheader' script to create `config.h.in' from `configure.in'. Ignore troublesome -lucb and -lPW when searching for alloca. Rename --exec_prefix to --exec-prefix for GNU standards conformance. Improve detection of STDC library. Add AC_HAVE_LIBRARY to check for non-default libraries. Function checking should work with future GNU libc releases. Major changes in Autoconf 1.2: The --srcdir option is now usually unnecessary. Add a file containing sample comments describing CPP macros. A comment in config.status tells which host it was configured on. Substituted variable values can now contain commas. Fix bugs in various feature checks. Major changes in Autoconf 1.1: Added AC_STRCOLL macro. Made AC_GETLOADAVG check for more things. AC_OUTPUT argument is now optional. Various bug fixes. ----- Copyright (C) 1993-1996, 1998-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright notice and this notice are preserved. This file is offered as-is, without warranty of any kind. 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