Re: GNOME 2.2 screenshots

[Tom Tromey <tromey redhat com>]

>>>>> "Havoc" == Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com> writes:

Havoc> So here is how we would ideally move to new automake:
Havoc>  - all our current scripts would refer to the command "automake-1.4"
Havoc>    instead of just "automake"
Havoc>  - any module that wanted could just change their scripts to 
Havoc>    refer to "automake-1.6" instead
Havoc>  - people just install both automakes

Havoc> I'm not sure if that works with upstream automake tarballs yet -
Havoc> cc'ing Tom. We would need a release of automake 1.4 with the
Havoc> "automake-1.4" name in it.

That makes sense.  I'm not really too thrilled about doing it, given
that the 1.4 series is very old and we don't want to support it any
more.  Alexandre, what do you think?

Havoc> Ideally the automake-1.6 package would not even contain a thing
Havoc> called simply "automake" since it just encourages bugs of the
Havoc> form "I got the wrong automake"

I don't think we'll do this.  Instead just put AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS = 1.6
into the top-level Makefile.am of any converted package.  Then you'll
get an error if you accidentally use 1.4.

Havoc> If we can't do parallel install, we can't migrate to new
Havoc> automake module-by-module. That means that as soon as we move
Havoc> to 1.6 for HEAD, then people can't work on the stable branch
Havoc> anymore, unless they have two totally different build prefixes,
Havoc> with their own copies of autotools.

I don't understand.  Is this somehow related to the automatic rebuild
rules?

Havoc> I have yet to hear what new automake buys us that warrants the
Havoc> enormous world of migration pain.

I've appended all the NEWS entries since 1.4.

The bottom line is: many, many bug fixes.  A new dependency tracking
scheme that lets BUILT_SOURCES work correctly (and fixes other
problems besides).  Frequently you can now remove ugly hacks from
Makefile.am since 1.6 fixes so many problems.  There are also a bunch
of new features that may or may not be useful to you.

Tom

New in 1.6.2:
* Many bug fixes, including:
  - Requiring the current version works.
  - Fix "$@" portability issues (for Zsh).
  - Fix output of dummy dependency files in presence of post-processed
    Makefile.in's.
  - Don't compute dependencies in background to avoid races with libtool.
  - Fix handling of _OBJECTS variables for targets sharing source variables.
  - Check dependency mode for Java when AM_PROG_GCJ is used.

New in 1.6.1:
* automake --output-dir is deprecated
* Many bug fixes, including:
  - Don't choke on AM_LDFLAGS definitions.
  - Clean libtool objects from subdirectories.
  - Allow configure variables with reserved suffix and unknown prefix
    (e.g. AC_SUBST(mumble_LDFLAGS) when 'mumble' is not a target).
  - Fix the definition of AUTOMAKE and ACLOCAL in configure.

New in 1.6:
* Autoconf 2.52 is required.
* `dist' generates all the archive flavors, as did `dist-all'.
* `dist-gzip' generates the Gzip tar file only.
* Combining Automake Makefile conditionals no longer lead to a combinatorial
  explosion.  Makefile.in's keep a reasonable size.
* AM_FUNC_ERROR_AT_LINE, AM_FUNC_STRTOD, AM_FUNC_OBSTACK, AM_PTRDIFF_T
  are no longer shipped, since Autoconf 2.52 provides them (both as AM_
  and AC_).
* `#line' of Lex and Yacc files are properly set.
* EXTRA_DIST can contain generated directories.
* Support for dot-less extensions in suffix rules.
* The part of the distcheck target that checks whether distclean actually
  cleans all built files has been moved in a separate target, distcleancheck,
  so it can be overridden easily.
* `make distcheck' will pass additional options defined in
  $(DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS) to configure.
* Fixed CDPATH portability problems, in particular for MacOS X.
* Fixed handling of nobase_ targets.
* Fixed support of implicit rules leading to .lo objects.
* Fixed late inclusion of --add-missing files (e.g. depcomp) in DIST_COMMON
* Added uninstall-hook target
* `AC_INIT AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE(tarname,version)' is an obsolete construct.
  You can now use `AC_INIT(pkgname,version) AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE' instead.
  (Note that "pkgname" is not "tarname", see the manual for details.)
  It is also possible to pass a list of global Automake options as
  first argument to this new form of AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE.
* Compiler-based assembler is now called `CCAS'; people expected `AS'
  to be a real assembler.
* AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE will set STRIP itself when it needs it.  Adding
  AC_CHECK_TOOL([STRIP], [strip]) manually is no longer required.
* aclocal and automake are also installed with the version number
  appended, and some of the install directory names have changed.
  This lets you have multiple versions installed simultaneously.
* Support for parsers and lexers in subdirectories.

New in 1.5:
* Support for `configure.ac'.
* Support for `else COND', `endif COND' and negated conditions `!COND'.
* `make dist-all' is much faster.
* Allows '@' AC_SUBSTs in macro names.
* Faster AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE (requires update of `missing' script)
* User-side dependency tracking.  Developers no longer need GNU make
* Python support
* Uses DIST_SUBDIRS in some situations when SUBDIRS is conditional
* Most files are correctly handled if they appear in subdirs
  For instance, a _DATA file can appear in a subdir
* GNU tar is no longer required for `make dist'
* Added support for `dist_' and `nodist_' prefixes
* Added support for `nobase_' prefix
* Compiled Java support
* Support for per-executable and per-library compilation flags
* Many bug fixes