Autoconf 2.56 is released

[Akim Demaille]

The Autoconf team -- Akim, Alexandre, Jim, Paul, and Tom -- is happy
to annonce the birth of Autoconf 2.56, aka 2.55 with a packaging
problem fixed.

  - Why should I upgrade from 2.54?

A few bug fixes, improved portability, no known incompatibility with
2.54 and 2.55, forthcoming Gettext release might require 2.55.  See
below for the list of user visible changes.

Running `autoreconf -fv' should be enough.


   - Why should I upgrade from 2.13?

This version is no longer maintained.  It does not address recent
architectures, recent compilers etc.  We know that upgrading from 2.13
to 2.5x is not an easy task, especially because the Autoconf 2.13 was
extremely tolerant to incorrect macro invocations, but waiting longer
endangers the portability of your package and only delays the
conversation to newer Autoconf versions.  Worse: some maintainers now
spend a significant amount of time fixing bugs in 2.13 or backporting
macros from 2.55.


   - Where can I find it?

  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.56.tar.gz   (1.1 MB)
  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.56.tar.bz2  (795 KB)
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.54-2.56.delta   (7 KB)

and soon from the mirrors listed on http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html.


Here are the MD5 and SHA1 signatures:

0e142e9bc890786845950e84ffb52adf  autoconf-2.56.tar.gz
1b0ecb66f03af3f745981c7d8bfc2a91  autoconf-2.56.tar.bz2
edcb98aa66f5c74a579109aef9cf3270  autoconf-2.55-2.56.xdelta
afff4a43d0b71a05de7b72e5a493a3e94219160c  autoconf-2.56.tar.gz
5d2b082c2c76476a28a3b7bc0b537ccf6b5ad6f6  autoconf-2.56.tar.bz2
e1befdcb8d1032964021e29d6ad17975a766aa13  autoconf-2.55-2.56.xdelta


NEWS:

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_PROGRAMS 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.

** 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.

** 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 2.57

- ./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
  address@hidden