* NEWS: Document changes with echo and printf, and the lack

of limits on the total size of multi-line values of substituted
variables.

diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 97c60f189974612e30f603f1ecc325a7cc3444cb..1740dc883ed9888c19e750d70e3975857a981da8 100644 (file)
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,10 @@
+2006-12-11  Paul Eggert  <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
+       and Ralf Wildenhues  <Ralf.Wildenhues@gmx.de>
+
+       * NEWS: Document changes with echo and printf, and the lack
+       of limits on the total size of multi-line values of substituted
+       variables.
+
 2006-12-10  Paul Eggert  <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
 
        * doc/autoconf.texi (Writing Autoconf Input): Renamed from

diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 4f2ded1e5422c0102e708a2d52b235dbe0c489d8..1a1cb4bbcafd9b579603c5e4dbad8bcfb0668c8f 100644 (file)
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -8,10 +8,25 @@
    due to lack of ancient systems to test it on.
 
 ** config.status now uses awk instead of sed for most substitutions, for speed.
-   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.
+
+   - As a side effect multi-line values of substituted variables are
+     no longer limited 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)