GNU M4 1.4.8b released (beta release)

[Eric Blake]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

The GNU M4 Team is pleased to announce the beta release of GNU M4 1.4.8b.

GNU `m4' is an implementation of the traditional Unix macro processor. It
is mostly SVR4 compatible, although it has some extensions (for example,
handling more than 9 positional parameters to macros).  `m4' also has
built-in functions for including files, running shell commands, doing
arithmetic, etc.  Autoconf needs GNU `m4' for generating `configure'
scripts, but not for running them.

Here are the compressed sources:

  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/m4/m4-1.4.8b.tar.gz    [746 KB]
  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/m4/m4-1.4.8b.tar.bz2   [591 KB]

Diffs against M4 1.4.8 are not available at this time, but will be
generated as part of the M4 1.4.9 release.

Here are the gpg detached signatures:

  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/m4/m4-1.4.8b.tar.gz.sig
  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/m4/m4-1.4.8b.tar.bz2.sig

You should download the signature named after any tarball you download,
and then verify its integrity with, for example:

  gpg --verify m4-1.4.8b.tar.gz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key, then
run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys F4850180

Here are the MD5 and SHA1 checksums:

  e44ea9d3c28fab6c4ab0f067b5607416  m4-1.4.8b.tar.gz
  0619358c9c95110cb4d75c6bec8cc5b1  m4-1.4.8b.tar.bz2
  a82bd1194a04ef5788baee6cb6547de41ceecc1e m4-1.4.8b.tar.gz
  7c986708ae9fb22b673e8b5574da15a6e2a51153 m4-1.4.8b.tar.bz2

This release exercises several recent changes in gnulib, in an attempt to
improve code portability while minimizing maintainence efforts.  Testing
on a wide variety of platforms prior to the formal release of M4 1.4.9 is
appreciated.  This release also fixes a couple of regressions introduced
in 1.4.8, and adds some POSIX compliance to the `eval' and `include'
builtins.  It also adds a command-line option --warn-macro-sequence that
can be used to prepare for the eventual M4 2.0 release, since some of the
POSIX compliance changes planned for M4 2.0 are not backwards-compatible
with existing M4 1.4.x scripts.

This release was bootstrapped with Automake 1.10 and Autoconf 2.61.

Alternatively, you can fetch the unbootstrapped sourcecode from anonymous
cvs by using the following commands:

  $ export CVS_RSH=ssh
  $ cvs -z3 -d :pserver:address@hidden:/sources/m4 \
  co -r release-1_4_8b m4

You will then need to have recent versions of Automake and Autoconf
installed, and a recent checkout of gnulib, in order to bootstrap the
checked out sources yourself.

New in 1.4.8b: 24 Feb 2007

 * Fix a regression introduced in 1.4.8 that made m4 unable to process
files larger than 2GiB on some platforms.
 * Fix a regression introduced in 1.4.8 that made m4 dump core when
invoked as 'm4 -- file'.
 * The `eval' builtin now follows C precedence rules.  Additionally, the
short-circuit operators correctly short-circuit division by zero.  The
previously undocumented alias of '=' meaning '==' in eval now triggers a
deprecation warning, so that a future version of M4 can implement a form
of variable assignment as an extension.
 * The `include' builtin now affects exit status on failure, as required
by POSIX.  Use `sinclude' if you need a successful exit status.
 * The `-E'/`--fatal-warnings' command-line option now has two levels.
When specified only once, warnings affect exit status, but execution
continues, so that you can see all warnings instead of fixing them one at
a time.  To acheive 1.4.8 behavior, where the first warning immediately
exits, specify -E twice on the command line.
 * A new `--warn-macro-sequence' command-line option allows detection of
sequences in `define' and `pushdef' definitions that match an optional
regular expression.  The default regular expression is
`\$\({[^}]*}\|[0-9][0-9]+\)', corresponding to the sequences that might
not behave correctly when upgrading to the eventual M4 2.0.  By default,
M4 2.0 will follow the POSIX requirement that a macro definition
containing `$11' must expand to the first argument concatenated with 1,
rather than the eleventh argument; and will take advantage of the POSIX
wording that allows implementations to treat `${11}' as the eleventh
argument instead of literal text.  Be aware that Autoconf 2.61 will not
work with this option enabled with the default regular expression; but
Autoconf 2.62 will be compatible with this option.
 * Improved portability to platforms such as BSD/OS and AIX.

Please report bugs to <address@hidden>, along with the output of 'make
check' and any other information that might be useful in resolving the issue.

- --
Eric Blake
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (Cygwin)
Comment: Public key at home.comcast.net/~ericblake/eblake.gpg
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFF4HoP84KuGfSFAYARAgpkAJ96rN1uj3xVtltl3FKGI4UnIeSG+ACgrBQD
QLBfbVA8a/F2990x5aU0Ex0=
=LURx
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----