This is the announcement for the GNU Automake 1.13.1b test release. This is a bug-fixing release. Its main purpose is to re-introduce some obsolete m4 macros that had been removed too hastily, bringing woes and problems for distro packagers; see: <http://www.mail-archive.com/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/msg52840.html> <http://blog.flameeyes.eu/2013/01/autotools-mythbuster-automake-pains>
It also offers some minor documentation fixes, and introduces new runtime (non-fatal!) warnings for a couple of discouraged features of Texinfo support: use of suffix-less info files, and use of Texinfo input files with '.txi' or '.texinfo' extensions. See below for the detailed list of changes since the previous version, as summarized by the NEWS file. Download here: ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.13.1b.tar.gz ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.13.1b.tar.xz Release is tentatively planned in about a week; but it won't actually take place until the distro packagers have confirmed the changes introduced are good enough to fix the issues they've been seeing. Please report bugs and problems to <bug-autom...@gnu.org>, and send general comments and feedback to <automake@gnu.org>. Thanks to everyone who has reported problems, contributed patches, and helped testing Automake! -*-*-*- New in 1.13.2: * WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities! - Automake 1.14 will require Autoconf 2.70 or later (which is still unreleased at the moment of writing, but is planned to be released before Automake 1.14 is). - Automake 1.14 will drop support for the long-deprecated 'configure.in' name for the Autoconf input file. You are advised to start using recommended name 'configure.ac' instead, ASAP. - The ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS special make variable will be fully deprecated in Automake 1.14 (where it will raise warnings in the "obsolete" category). You are advised to start relying on the new Automake support for AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIRS instead (which was introduced in Automake 1.13). - Support for IRIX and the SGI C/C++ compilers will be removed in Automake 1.14: they have seen their last release in 2006, and SGI is expected to retire support from them in December 2013; see <http://www.sgi.com/services/support/irix_mips_support.html> for more information. - Future versions of Automake might remove support for MS-DOS and Windows 95/98/ME (support for them was offered by relying on the DJGPP project). Note however that both Cygwin and MSYS/MinGW on modern Windows versions will continue to be fully supported. - Support for the long-deprecated INCLUDES variable will be removed altogether in Automake 1.14. The AM_CPPFLAGS variable should be used instead. - Automake-provided scripts and makefile recipes might (finally!) start assuming a POSIX shell in Automake 1.14. - Starting from Automake 1.14, third-party m4 files located in the system-wide aclocal directory, as well as in any directory listed in the ACLOCAL_PATH environment variable, will take precedence over "built-in" Automake macros. For example (assuming Automake is installed in the /usr/local hierarchy), a definition of the AM_PROG_VALAC macro found in '/usr/local/share/aclocal/my-vala.m4' should take precedence over the same-named automake-provided macro (defined in '/usr/local/share/aclocal-1.14/vala.m4'). * Obsolescent features: - Use of suffix-less info files (that can be specified through the '@setfilename' macro in Texinfo input files) is discouraged, and its use will raise warnings in the 'obsolete' category. - Use of Texinfo input files with '.txi' or '.texinfo' extensions is discouraged, and its use will raise warnings in the 'obsolete' category. You are advised to simply use the '.texi' extension instead. * Documentation fixes: - The long-deprecated but still supported two-arguments invocation form of AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE is documented once again. This seems the sanest thing to do, given that support for such an usage might need to remain in place for a unspecified amount of time in order to cater for people who want to define the version number for their package dynamically at configure runtime (unfortunately, Autoconf does not yet support this scenario, so we cannot delegate the work to it). - The serial testsuite harness is no longer reported as "deprecated", but as "discouraged". We have no plan to remove it, not to make its use cause runtime warnings. - The parallel testsuite is no longer reported as "experimental"; it is well tested, ans should be stable now. - The 'shar' and 'tarZ' distribution formats and the 'dist-shar' and 'dist-tarZ' options are obsolescent, and their use is deprecated in the documentation. - Other minor miscellaneous fixes and improvements; in particular, some improvements in cross-references. * Bugs fixed: - The obsolete macros AM_CONFIG_HEADER or AM_PROG_CC_STDC work once again, as they did in Automake 1.12.x (albeit printing runtime warnings in the 'obsolete' category). Removing them has turned out to be a very bad idea, because it complicated distro packing enormously. Making them issue fatal warnings, as we did in Automake 1.13, has turned out to be a similarly very bad idea, for exactly the same reason.
