Mailing-List: contact cygwin-developers-help AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-developers-owner AT sources DOT redhat DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin-developers AT sources DOT redhat DOT com X-Apparently-From: Message-ID: <3B09262E.BB121F0D@yahoo.com> Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 10:29:02 -0400 From: Earnie Boyd X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 [en] (WinNT; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Cygwin Developers Subject: [Fwd: RFC: Autoconf 2.50 is released] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit FYI. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: RFC: Autoconf 2.50 is released Date: 21 May 2001 15:33:25 +0200 From: Akim Demaille To: Autoconf List , Automake List ,Libtool List ,GNU Announcements List , bug-gnu-utils AT gnu DOT org The Autoconf team is extremely proud (and quite relieved) to announce the release of Autoconf 2.50. As can be guessed from the NEWS excerpt below, profound changes have been made in order to provide a more coherent interface and more user-friendly macros. Autoconf can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.50.tar.gz b3d78c5aefd53ed69d93182239af65e3 autoconf-2.50.tar.gz ae8d8bd7718fa6fd6e4b77cb8cb4332ef50dfaa8 autoconf-2.50.tar.gz Happy configuring! Akim, Alexandre, Jim, Pavel, Paul, and Tom. * Major changes in Autoconf 2.50 ** 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 filesystems. - 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++. _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com