Update to 1.15:

New in 1.15:

* Improvements and refactorings in the install-sh script:

  - It has been modernized, and now makes the following assumptions
    *unconditionally*:
    (1) a working 'dirname' program is available;
    (2) the ${var:-value} shell parameters substitution works;
    (3) the "set -f" and "set +f" shell commands work, and, respectively,
        disable and enable shell globbing.

  - The script implements stricter error checking, and now it complains
    and bails out if any of the following expectations is not met:
    (1) the options -d and -t are never used together;
    (2) the argument passed to option -t is a directory;
    (3) if there are two or more SOURCEFILE arguments, the
        DESTINATION argument must be a directory.

* Automake-generated testsuites:

  - The default test-driver used by the Automake-generates testsuites
    now appends the result and exit status of each "plain" test to the
    associated log file (automake bug#11814).

  - The perl implementation of the TAP testsuite driver is no longer
    installed in the Automake's scripts directory, and is instead just
    distributed as a "contrib" addition.  There should be no reason to
    use this implementation anyway in real packages, since the awk+shell
    implementation of the TAP driver (which is documented in the manual)
    is more portable and has feature parity with the perl implementation.

  - The rule generating 'test-suite.log' no longer risk incurring in an
    extra useless "make all" recursive invocation in some corner cases
    (automake bug#16302).

* Distribution:

  - Automake bug#18286: "make distcheck" could sometimes fail to detect
    files missing from the distribution tarball, especially in those cases
    where both the generated files and their dependencies are explicitly
    in $(srcdir).  An important example of this are *generated* makefile
    fragments included at Automake time in Makefile.am; e.g.:

        ...
        $(srcdir)/fragment.am: $(srcdir)/data.txt $(srcdir)/preproc.sh
            cd $(srcdir) && $(SHELL) preproc.sh <data.txt >fragment.am
        include $(srcdir)/fragment.am
        ...

    If the use forgot to add data.txt and/or preproc.sh in the distribution
    tarball, "make distcheck" would have erroneously succeeded!  This issue
    is now fixed.

  - As a consequence of the previous change, "make distcheck" will run
    using '$(distdir)/_build/sub' as the build directory, rather than
    simply '$(distdir)/_build' (as it was the case for Automake 1.14 and
    earlier).  Consequently, the './configure' and 'make' invocations
    issued by the distcheck recipe now have $(srcdir) equal to '../..',
    rather than to just '..'.  Dependent and similar variables (e.g.,
    '$(top_srcdir)') are also changed accordingly.

    Thus, Makefiles that made assumptions about the exact values of the
    build and source directories used by "make distcheck" will have to
    be adjusted.  Notice that making such assumptions was a bad and
    unsupported practice anyway, since the exact locations of those
    directories should be considered implementation details, and we
    reserve the right to change them at any time.

* Miscellaneous bugs fixed:

  - The expansion of AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE ends once again with a trailing
    newline (bug#16841).  Regression introduced in Automake 1.14.

  - We no longer risk to use '$ac_aux_dir' before it's defined (see
    automake bug#15981). Bug introduced in Automake 1.14.

  - The code used to detect whether the currently used make is GNU make
    or not (relying on the private macro 'am__is_gnu_make') no longer
    risks causing "Arg list too long" for projects using automatic
    dependency tracking and having a ton of source files (bug#18744).

  - Automake tries to offer a more deterministic output for generated
    Makefiles, in the face of the newly-introduced randomization for
    hash keys order in Perl 5.18.

  - In older Automake versions, if a user defined one single Makefile
    fragment (say 'foo.am') to be included via Automake includes in
    his main Makefile.am, and defined a custom make rule to generate that
    file from other data, Automake used to spuriously complain with some
    message like "... overrides Automake target '$(srcdir)/foo.am".
    This bug is now fixed.

  - The user can now extend the special .PRECIOUS target, the same way
    he could already do with the .MAKE .and .PHONY targets.

  - Some confusing typos have been fixed in the manual and in few warning
    messages (automake bug#16827 and bug#16997).


(wiz)