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Zack Weinberg fec8a33d87
Require GNU M4 1.4.8 or later.
The former minimum version was 1.4.6.  1.4.6 and 1.4.7 do not track
the original location of text fed to ‘m4wrap’, which breaks autom4te’s
ability to trace macros invoked from _AC_FINALIZE.

Right now, the only _user_ visible effect of this is that autoconf
running on M4 1.4.6 or 1.4.7 will emit an internal error, instead of
the intended warning message, when it processes a configure.ac that
neglects to invoke AC_INIT or AC_OUTPUT.  Perhaps more importantly,
it causes a bunch of scary-sounding failures in our own testsuite,
which deliberately doesn’t use AC_OUTPUT sometimes.

M4 1.4.6 and 1.4.7 also have bugs in location tracking of macro
invocations spread over multiple lines, which, guess what, causes
even more testsuite failures.

1.4.8 came out in 2006.  As a practical matter, this change to our
requirements means that people using macOS *to run autoconf* (not just
to run generated configure scripts) cannot use the system-provided m4
anymore.  {Free,Net,Open}BSD already don’t ship GNU M4 as their system
m4, so users of those OSes should not be affected.
2022-07-06 16:11:43 -04:00
bin make update-copyright 2022-05-19 13:57:38 -07:00
build-aux make update-copyright 2022-05-19 13:57:38 -07:00
doc Improve regex documentation 2022-06-22 00:35:59 -05:00
lib Port _AC_COMPILER_EXEEXT to IBM z/OS Unix 2022-06-28 18:27:40 -05:00
m4 Require GNU M4 1.4.8 or later. 2022-07-06 16:11:43 -04:00
man make update-copyright 2022-05-19 13:57:38 -07:00
tests testsuite: Handle `balanced ASCII quotes' correctly in m4 errors. 2022-07-06 16:05:42 -04:00
.gitattributes maint: don't sync elisp-comp or missing from gnulib 2012-06-27 16:59:21 -06:00
.gitignore Update .gitignore for move of version.m4. 2021-10-03 18:15:20 -04:00
.prev-version trunk post-release administrivia 2021-01-28 17:54:10 -05:00
.x-update-copyright make update-copyright 2021-01-28 15:19:21 -05:00
AUTHORS make update-copyright 2022-05-19 13:57:38 -07:00
bootstrap Avoid \] in BREs and EREs 2022-06-28 18:27:40 -05:00
BUGS make update-copyright 2022-05-19 13:57:38 -07:00
cfg.mk make update-copyright 2022-05-19 13:57:38 -07:00
ChangeLog.0 Prefer HTTPS to FTP and HTTP 2017-09-16 17:48:51 -07:00
ChangeLog.1 Prefer HTTPS to FTP and HTTP 2017-09-16 17:48:51 -07:00
ChangeLog.2 Prefer HTTPS to FTP and HTTP 2017-09-16 17:48:51 -07:00
ChangeLog.3 maint: update URLs 2017-09-23 12:49:23 -07:00
configure.ac make update-copyright 2022-05-19 13:57:38 -07:00
COPYING Update links in COPYING, COPYINGv3, and COPYING.EXCEPTION. 2020-07-10 16:43:22 -04:00
COPYING.EXCEPTION Update links in COPYING, COPYINGv3, and COPYING.EXCEPTION. 2020-07-10 16:43:22 -04:00
COPYINGv3 Update links in COPYING, COPYINGv3, and COPYING.EXCEPTION. 2020-07-10 16:43:22 -04:00
GNUmakefile make fetch 2021-01-28 15:21:49 -05:00
HACKING make update-copyright 2022-05-19 13:57:38 -07:00
maint.mk Avoid \] in BREs and EREs 2022-06-28 18:27:40 -05:00
Makefile.am make update-copyright 2022-05-19 13:57:38 -07:00
NEWS Require GNU M4 1.4.8 or later. 2022-07-06 16:11:43 -04:00
README make update-copyright 2022-05-19 13:57:38 -07:00
README-alpha make update-copyright 2022-05-19 13:57:38 -07:00
README-hacking make update-copyright 2022-05-19 13:57:38 -07:00
THANKS make update-copyright 2022-05-19 13:57:38 -07:00
TODO make update-copyright 2022-05-19 13:57:38 -07:00

-*- text -*-

Autoconf

Autoconf is an extensible package of M4 macros that produce shell
scripts to automatically configure software source code packages.
These scripts can adapt the packages to many kinds of UNIX-like
systems without manual user intervention.  Autoconf creates a
configuration script for a package from a template file that lists the
operating system features that the package can use, in the form of M4
macro calls.

Producing configuration scripts using Autoconf requires GNU M4 and
Perl.  You should install GNU M4 (version 1.4.6 or later is required;
1.4.14 or later is recommended) and Perl (5.006 or later) before
configuring Autoconf, so that Autoconf's configure script can find
them.  The configuration scripts produced by Autoconf are
self-contained, so their users do not need to have Autoconf (or GNU
M4, Perl, etc.).

You can get GNU M4 here:

https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/m4/

The file INSTALL should be distributed with packages that use
Autoconf-generated configure scripts and Makefiles that conform to the
GNU coding standards.  The package's README can just give an overview
of the package, where to report bugs, and a pointer to INSTALL for
instructions on compilation and installation.  This removes the need
to maintain many similar sets of installation instructions.

Be sure to read BUGS and INSTALL.

Mail suggestions to autoconf@gnu.org, report bugs to
bug-autoconf@gnu.org, and submit patches to autoconf-patches@gnu.org.
All changes can be tracked at the read-only autoconf-commit@gnu.org.
Always include the Autoconf version number, which you can get by
running 'autoconf --version'.  Archives of bug-autoconf@gnu.org can be
found in <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-autoconf/>, and
similarly for the other mailing lists.

Licensing
=========
Autoconf is released under the General Public License version 3 (GPLv3+).
Additionally, Autoconf includes a licensing exception in some of its
source files; see the respective copyright notices for how your
project is impacted by including scripts generated by Autoconf, and the
COPYING.EXCEPTION file for the exception in terms of the Additional
Permissions as described in section 7 of GPLv3.

For more licensing information, see
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html> and
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/exceptions.html>.

For any copyright year range specified as YYYY-ZZZZ in this package
note that the range specifies every single year in that closed interval.

GNU Project notice
==================
Autoconf is part of the GNU Operating System, developed by the GNU Project.

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-----

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