* Noteworthy changes in release 1.4.16 (2011-03-01) [stable]
** Fix regressions in the `index' builtin. On glibc platforms, this
avoids false positives from a strstr bug in glibc 2.9 through 2.12;
on many other platforms, it fixes two separate regressions, a false
positive introduced in 1.4.11 and a false negative in 1.4.15.
** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
* Noteworthy changes in release 1.4.15 (2010-08-31) [stable]
** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.9b where the `format' builtin could
crash on an invalid format string.
** Fix compilation against newer glibc, and on AIX 7.1BETA.
** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
* Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.13 (2009-04-01) [stable]
Released by Eric Blake, based on git version 1.4.12.*
** The manual is now distributed under the terms of FDL 1.3.
** The `divert' and `undivert' builtins have been made more efficient
when using temporary files for large diversions.
** The `translit' builtin has been made more efficient when the second
argument is short.
** The input engine has been optimized for faster processing.
** The command line option `--debugfile', introduced in 1.4.7, now
treats its argument as optional, in order to allow setting the debug
output back to stderr when used without an argument; and order is now
significant with respect to command line files. You must therefore use
`m4 --debugfile=trace file', not `m4 file --debugfile trace'. This
change does not affect the deprecated `-o'/`--error-output' option.
** The `syscmd' and `esyscmd' builtins can be configured to use an
alternate shell, via the new `configure' option `--with-syscmd-shell'.
** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
* Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.12 (2008-10-10) [stable]
Released by Eric Blake, based on git version 1.4.11.*
** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.4b where using `traceon' could delete
a macro. This was most noticeable with `traceon(`traceon')', but
would also happen in cases such as `foo(traceon(`foo'))'.
** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.7 where `m4 -N9' died with an assertion
failure.
** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.11 where `defn' died with an assertion
failure on a traced but undefined macro.
** New `-g'/`--gnu' command-line option overrides `-G'/`--traditional'.
For now, the environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT has no effect on M4
behavior; but a future release of M4 will behave as though --traditional
is implied if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set (this future change is necessary,
because in the current release, there is no way to disable GNU
extensions that conflict with POSIX without the use of a non-POSIX
command-line argument). Clients of M4 that want to use GNU extensions,
even when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, should start using the -g command-line
argument, even though it is currently a no-op if -G did not appear
earlier in the command line, so that the client will not break in the
face of an upgraded m4 and a POSIXLY_CORRECT execution environment.
** The `-L'/`--nesting-limit' command-line option now defaults to 0 for
unlimited on platforms that can detect and deal with stack overflow. On
systems that lack alternate stack support, such as Cygwin, and on
systems that do not obey the POSIX semantics for distinguishing stack
overflow from other exceptions, such as Linux, you can optionally
install the libsigsegv library (version 2.6 or newer recommended) to
enhance m4's ability to accurately report stack overflow:
http://www.gnu.org/software/libsigsegv/
** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
* Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.11 (2008-04-02) [stable]
Released by Eric Blake, based on git version 1.4.10a
** Security fixes for the -F option, for bugs present since -F was
introduced in 1.3: Avoid core dump with 'm4 -F file -t undefined', and
avoid arbitrary code execution with certain file names.
** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.9b in the `divert' builtin when more
than 512 kibibytes are saved in diversions on platforms like NetBSD
or darwin where fopen(name,"a+") seeks to the end of the file.
** The output of the `maketemp' and `mkstemp' builtins is now quoted if a
file was created. This is a minor security fix, because it was possible
(although rather unlikely) that an unquoted string could match an
existing macro name, such that use of the `mkstemp' output would trigger
inadvertent macro expansion and operate on the wrong file name.
** Enhance the `defn' builtin to support concatenation of multiple text
arguments, as required by POSIX. However, at this time, it is not
possible to concatenate a builtin macro with anything else; a warning is
now issued if this is attempted, although a future version of M4 may
lift this restriction to match other implementations.
** Enhance the `format' builtin to parse all C99 floating point numbers,
even on platforms where strtod(3) is buggy, although the replacement
function does have the known issue of rounding errors when parsing
some decimal floating point values. This fixes testsuite failures
introduced in 1.4.9b.
** Enhance the `index' builtin to guarantee linear behavior, in spite of
the surprisingly large number of systems with a brain-dead quadratic
strstr(3).
** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
versions. This is still in discussion with upstream, but working m4
is critical, so apply this stop-gap solution. It works on the other
BSD derived stdio implementations as well, if you want to switch.
Version 1.4.10 - 09 Jul 2007, by Eric Blake (CVS version 1.4.9c)
* Upgrade from GPL version 2 to GPL version 3 or later.
* A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
* Avoid undefined behavior introduced in 1.4.9b in the `format' builtin
when handling %c. However, this area of code has never been documented,
and currently does not match the POSIX behavior of printf(1), so it may
have further changes in the next version.
Version 1.4.9b - 29 May 2007, by Eric Blake (CVS version 1.4.9a)
* Fix regression introduced in 1.4.9 in the `eval' builtin when performing
division.
* Fix regression introduced in 1.4.8 in the `-F' option that made it
impossible to freeze more than 512 kibibytes of diverted text.
* The synclines option `-s' no longer generates sync lines in the middle of
multiline comments or quoted strings.
* Work around a number of corner-case POSIX compliance bugs in various
broken stdio libraries. In particular, the `syscmd' builtin behaves
more predictably when stdin is seekable.
* The `format' builtin now understands formats such as %a, %A, and %'hhd,
and works around a number of platform printf bugs. Furthermore, the
sequence format(%*.*d,-1,-1,1) no longer outputs random data. However,
some non-compliant platforms such as mingw still have known bugs in
strtod that may cause testsuite failures.
* The testsuite is improved to also run gnulib portability tests for the
features that M4 imports from gnulib.
Version 1.4.4 - October 2005, by Gary V. Vaughan
* ./configure --infodir=/usr/share/info now works correctly.
* When any file named on the command line is missing exit with status 1.
Version 1.4.3 - March 2005, by Gary V. Vaughan
* DESTDIR installs now work correctly.
* Don't segfault with uncompilable regexps to changeword().
* Always use \n line-endings for frozen files (fixes a cygwin bug).
* Portability fix for systems lacking mkstemp(3).
* Approximately 20% speed up in the common case of usage with autoconf.
* Supported on QNX 6.3.
* maketemp now creates an empty file with the given name, instead of merely
returning the name of a nonexistent file. This closes a security hole.
(Now it builds on Darwin/MacOSX; no more 'sigstack' linking error.)