sorting NEWS (Was: Re: 02-distclean-test.diff)

[Alexandre Duret-Lutz]

>>> "Jim" == Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:

 Jim> Alexandre Duret-Lutz <address@hidden> wrote:
 Derek> See below.  Also, do you prefer prepended NEWS, appended NEWS, or does
 Derek> new NEWS just go wherever it looks best?
 >> 
 >> Presently the order is random.  If you or someone else have a
 >> preference I'll be happy to follow it.

 Jim> FYI, I think it's worthwhile to categorize NEWS entries,
 Jim> and recently began doing so for the coreutils.

Ok, I tried to do that for Automake.  How does that look?  Any
other recommendation?

New in 1.7a:

* Meta-News

  - The NEWS file is more verbose.

* Requirements

  - Autoconf 2.55 or greater is required.

* New features

  - AR's `cru' flags are now set in a global ARFLAGS variable instead
    of being hard-coded in each $(AR) invocation, so they can be
    substituted from configure.ac.  This has been requested by people
    dealing with non-POSIX ar implementations.

  - New warning option: -Woverride.  This will warn about any user
    target or variable definitions which override Automake
    definitions.

  - Texinfo rules back up and restore info files when makeinfo fails.

  - Texinfo rules now support the `html' target.
    Running this requires Texinfo 4.0 or greater.

    `html' is a new recursive target, so if your package mixes
    hand-crafted `Makefile.in's with Automake-generated
    `Makefile.in's, you should adjust the former to support (or
    ignore) this target so that `make html' recurses successfully.  If
    you had a custom `html' rule in your `Makefile.am', it's better to
    rename it as `html-local', otherwise your rule will override
    Automake's new rule (you can check that by running `automake
    -Woverride') and that will stop the recursion to subdirectories.

    Last but not least, this `html' rule is declared PHONY, even when
    overridden.  Fortunately, it appears that few packages use a
    non-PHONY `html' rule.

  - Any file which is m4_included from configure.ac will appear as a
    configure and Makefile.in dependency, and will be automatically
    distributed.

  - The rules for rebuilding Makefiles and Makefile.ins will now
    rebuild all Makefiles and all Makefile.ins at once when one of
    configure's dependencies has changed.  This is considerably faster
    than previous implementations, where config.status and automake
    were run separately in each directory (this still happens when you
    change a Makefile.am locally, without touching configure.ac or
    friends).  Doing this also solves a longstanding issue: these
    rebuild rules failed to work when adding new directories to the
    tree, forcing you to run automake manually.

  - For similar reasons, the rules to rebuild configure,
    config.status, and aclocal.m4 are now defined in all directories.
    Note that if you were using the CONFIG_STATUS_DEPENDENCIES and
    CONFIGURE_DEPENDENCIES (undocumented) variables, you should better
    define them in all directories.  This is easily done using an
    AC_SUBST.

  - aclocal will now use `m4_include' instead of copying local m4
    files into aclocal.m4.  (Local m4 files are those you ship with
    your project, other files will be copied as usual.)

    Because m4_included files are automatically distributed, it means
    for most projects there is no point in EXTRA_DISTing the list of
    m4 files which are used.  (You can probably get rid of
    m4/Makefile.am if you had one.)

  - aclocal will avoid touching aclocal.m4 when possible, so that
    Autom4te's cache isn't needlessly invalidated.  This behavior can
    be switched off with the new `--force' option.

  - New option no-dist-gzip.

  - install-sh now understands --version and --help.

* Obsolete features

  - lisp_DATA is now allowed.  If you are using the empty ELCFILES
    idiom to disable byte-compilation of lisp_LISP files, it is
    recommended that you switch to using lisp_DATA.  ELCFILES is no
    longer documented.

  - AM_PROG_CC_STDC is now empty.  The content of this macro was
    merged in AC_PROG_CC.  If your code uses $am_cv_prog_cc_stdc, you
    should adjust it to use $ac_cv_prog_cc_stdc instead.  (This
    renaming should be safe, even if you have to support several,
    versions of Automake, because AC_PROG_CC defines this variable
    since Autoconf 2.54.)

  - Some users where using the undocumented ACLOCAL_M4_SOURCES
    variable to override the aclocal.m4 dependencies computed
    (inaccurately) by older versions of Automake.  Because Automake
    now tracks configure's m4 dependencies accurately (see m4_include
    above), the use of ACLOCAL_M4_SOURCES should be considered
    obsolete and will be flagged as such when running `automake
    -Wobsolete'.

* Bug fixes

  - Defining programs conditionally using Automake conditionals no
    longer leads to a combinatorial explosion.  The following
    construct used to be troublesome when used with dozens of
    conditions.

      bin_PROGRAMS = a
      if COND1
        bin_PROGRAMS += a1
      endif
      if COND2
        bin_PROGRAMS += a2
      endif
      if COND3
        bin_PROGRAMS += a3
      endif
      ...

    Likewise for _SOURCES, _LDADD, and _LIBADD variables.

  - Automake now supports bin_PROGRAMS (or any *_PROGRAMS variable)
    being defined in several conditions.  As in

      if COND1
        bin_PROGRAMS = a1
      endif
      if COND2
        bin_PROGRAMS = a2
      endif

    Likewise for _SOURCES, _LDADD, and _LIBADD variables.

  - Cleanup the definitions of $(distdir) and $(top_distdir).
    $(top_distdir) now points to the root of the distribution
    directory created during `make dist', as it did in Automake 1.4,
    not to the root of the build tree as it did in intervening
    versions.  Furthermore these two variables are now only defined in
    the top level Makefile, and passed to sub-directories when running
    `make dist'.

* Miscellaneous

  - Targets dist-gzip, dist-bzip2, dist-tarZ, dist-zip are always defined.

-- 
Alexandre Duret-Lutz