GNU Autoconf NEWS - User visible changes.
-* Noteworthy changes in release 2.72e (2023-12-20) [release candidate]
-
-** Further improvements to subsecond timestamp handling
-
- Two subtle bugs were fixed. Also, ‘autom4te --version’ now reports
- whether autom4te is capable of reading subsecond timestamps from
- the file system, enabling other programs (notably Automake) to
- adjust their own behavior appropriately.
-
- There may still be problems with subsecond timestamps (see below).
- Because timestamp comparison is only used for autom4te’s cache,
- the only practical effect of these problems is to cause spurious
- failures in Autoconf and Automake’s test suites, in tests of the
- cache itself.
-
-** Significant bug fixes
-
-*** autom4te works with perl 5.6.x again
-*** BusyBox ‘mkdir’ is correctly identified
-*** AC_FUNC_MMAP successfully detects mmap on CheriBSD
-*** Better error message for calling m4_warn() with a bad first argument
-
-** Known bugs
-
-*** AC_SYS_LARGEFILE and AC_SYS_YEAR2038 only work correctly in C mode.
-
- This is only a problem for configure scripts that invoke either
- macro while AC_LANG([something other than C]) is in effect, and
- will only be a *visible* problem on systems where support
- for large files and/or timestamps after 2038 are *available*
- but not enabled by default.
-
- This is the cause of the AC_SYS_LARGEFILE, AC_SYS_YEAR2038, and/or
- AC_SYS_YEAR2038_RECOMMENDED testsuite failures on some systems.
- See <https://savannah.gnu.org/support/index.php?110983> for details
- and a workaround.
-
-*** “Substitute and define special characters” testsuite failure
-
- We believe this to be a bug in some versions of NetBSD /bin/sh.
- If you see this failure on any system besides *-unknown-netbsd9*,
- please post a comment on <https://savannah.gnu.org/support/index.php?110985>
- and attach a tarball of the failed test’s scratch directory
- (${builddir}/tests/testsuite.dir/270 in version 2.72; the number
- may change in the future as tests are added or removed).
-
-* Noteworthy changes in release 2.72d (2023-11-30) [beta]
+* Noteworthy changes in release 2.72 (2023-12-22) [release]
** Backward incompatibilities
than a second. (Note: even in the most recent release, Perl cannot
always match the file system’s timestamp resolution.)
- Generated 'configure' scripts continue to run without Perl.
+ Generated configure scripts continue to run without Perl.
*** Autoconf users now need GNU M4 1.4.8 (2006) or later.
Use of GNU M4 1.4.16 or later is recommended, as all earlier versions
provide an accurate prototype for getgroups in unistd.h, and to
implement it as specified in POSIX.
- AC_FUNC_GETGROUPS still includes a short blacklist of OSes with
+ AC_FUNC_GETGROUPS still includes a short block-list of OSes with
known, severe bugs in getgroups. It can be overridden using
- config.site. If you encounter a mistake in this blacklist
+ config.site. If you encounter a mistake in this list,
please report it to bug-autoconf.
*** All internal uses of AC_EGREP_CPP and AC_EGREP_HEADER have been removed.
output of the C preprocessor. Their use has been discouraged for
many years, as they tend to be unreliable; it is better to find a
way to use AC_COMPILE_IFELSE or AC_PREPROC_IFELSE instead. We have
- finally gotten around to taking our own advice.
+ finally taken our own advice.
This change might break configure scripts that expected probes for
‘grep’ and/or the C preprocessor to happen as a side effect of an
** New features
*** Support for ensuring time_t is Y2038-safe
- 'configure' can now ensure that time_t can represent moments in time
+ configure can now ensure that time_t can represent moments in time
after 18 January 2038, i.e. 2**31 - 1 seconds after the Unix epoch.
On most “64-bit” systems this is true by default; the new feature
is detection of systems where time_t is a 32-bit signed integer by
** Obsolete features and new warnings
*** Autoconf now quotes 'like this' instead of `like this'.
-
Autoconf’s diagnostics now follow current GNU coding standards,
which say that diagnostics in the C locale should quote 'like this'
with plain apostrophes instead of the older GNU style `like this'
with grave accent and apostrophe.
*** AC_PROG_GCC_TRADITIONAL no longer does anything.
-
This macro has had no useful effect since GCC dropped support for
traditional-mode compilation in version 3.3 (released in 2003), and
the systems that needed it are also long obsolete. It is now a
** Notable bug fixes
-*** Autoconf caches now use finer-grained timestamps.
-
- Autoconf now uses floating-point numbers rather than integers to
- represent cache file timestamps, thus avoiding some problems where
- automake incorrectly decides not to regenerate stale caches.
+*** autom4te now uses fine-grained file timestamps
+ Autoconf’s internal “autom4te” utility is now able to compare file
+ modification timestamps with sub-second precision, when available.
+ This eliminates a class of bugs where autom4te fails to regenerate
+ an outdated file. Automake 1.17 (forthcoming) is required for a
+ complete fix.
*** AC_HEADER_STDBOOL, AC_CHECK_HEADER_STDBOOL are obsolescent and less picky.
-
- These macros are now obsolescent, as programs can simply include
+ These macros are now obsolescent, as most programs can simply include
stdbool.h unconditionally. If you use these macros, they now accept
a stdbool.h that exists but does nothing, so long as ‘bool’, ‘true’,
and ‘false’ work anyway. This is for compatibility with C23 and
with C++.
*** AC_PROG_MKDIR_P now falls back on plain 'mkdir -p'.
-
When AC_PROG_MKDIR_P cannot find a mkdir implementation that is
known to lack race condition bugs, it now falls back on 'mkdir -p'
instead of falling back on a relative path to install-sh, as the
should work if it is installed; if not, you should avoid parallel
'make' on that platform.
-* Releases 2.72a,b,c were snapshots that did not get their own
- NEWS entries.
+*** Better diagnostics for calling m4_warn() with a bad first argument
+ Calling m4_warn with a first argument that doesn’t match any of the
+ official warning categories now produces a sensible error message,
+ instead of something that makes it look like there’s a bug in the
+ guts of autom4te. Also, the documentation has been adjusted in
+ several places to make it clearer what the official warning
+ categories are.
+
+ Note: In Autoconf 2.69 and earlier, the manual said that [] and [all]
+ could be used as the first argument to m4_warn. This was incorrect,
+ even at the time.
+
+*** Improved compatibility with a wide variety of systems and tools
+ including CheriBSD, Darwin (macOS), GNU Guix, OS/2, z/OS, Bash 5.2,
+ the BusyBox shell and utilities, Clang/LLVM version 16, the upcoming
+ GCC version 14, etc.
+
+** Known bugs
+
+*** AC_SYS_LARGEFILE and AC_SYS_YEAR2038 only work correctly in C mode.
+
+ This is only a problem for configure scripts that invoke either
+ macro while AC_LANG([something other than C]) is in effect, and
+ will only be a *visible* problem on systems where support
+ for large files and/or timestamps after 2038 are *available*
+ but not enabled by default.
+
+ This is the cause of the AC_SYS_LARGEFILE, AC_SYS_YEAR2038, and/or
+ AC_SYS_YEAR2038_RECOMMENDED testsuite failures on some systems.
+ See <https://savannah.gnu.org/support/index.php?110983> for details
+ and a workaround.
* Noteworthy changes in release 2.71 (2021-01-28) [stable]
projects / thirdparty / autoconf.git / commitdiff
