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xPack GNU M4 v1.4.19-1 released

· 3 min read
Liviu Ionescu (ilg)
Liviu Ionescu (ilg)

Version 1.4.19-1 is the first release of GNU M4.

The xPack GNU M4 is a standalone cross-platform binary distribution of GNU M4.

There are separate binaries for macOS (x64 and arm64) and GNU/Linux (x64, arm64 and arm).

Raspberry Pi

The main targets for the GNU/Linux Arm binaries are the Raspberry Pi class devices (armv7l and aarch64; armv6 is not supported).

Download​

The binary files are available from GitHub Releases.

Prerequisites​

  • x64 GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
  • arm64/arm GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
  • x64 macOS: 10.13 or later
  • arm64 macOS: 11.6 or later

Install​

The easiest way to install this specific version, is by using xpm:

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/m4@1.4.19-1.1 -verbose

Comprehensive instructions for installing xPack GNU M4 on different platforms can be found in the Install Guide.

Compliance​

The xPack GNU M4 generally follows the official GNU M4 releases.

The current version is based on:

  • GNU M4 version 1.4.19 from 2021-05-28.

Changes​

Compared to the upstream version, there are no functional changes.

Bug fixes​

  • none

Enhancements​

  • none

Known problems​

  • none

Documentation​

The original documentation is available online.

Build​

The binaries for all supported platforms (Windows, macOS and GNU/Linux) were built using the xPack Build Box (XBB), a set of build environments based on slightly older distributions, that should be compatible with most recent systems.

The scripts used to build this distribution are in:

  • distro-info/scripts

For the prerequisites and more details on the build procedure, please see the README-MAINTAINER page.

CI tests​

Before publishing, a set of simple tests were performed on an exhaustive set of platforms. The results are available from:

Tests​

TBD

Checksums​

The SHA-256 hashes for the files are:

356876be46079cc5768f0144210170bd9991f6651fbba930983fb160f92047e1
xpack-m4-1.4.19-1-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

31162614d87b873953590d68e51a7112e205edc11fbba1ee4b6fca296ff8da7d
xpack-m4-1.4.19-1-darwin-x64.tar.gz

88869ac3668ba24c82375fd027629e31fb045cc1c3d801d195d5e1947590910f
xpack-m4-1.4.19-1-linux-arm.tar.gz

e51ec78b5c28d30cfcaec166a63f5f510c7aed361c04662a1462afd70b6fbcf8
xpack-m4-1.4.19-1-linux-arm64.tar.gz

9f327c07506c5f620af13dd5009738560cb443feeabeac362947946b1f241d3d
xpack-m4-1.4.19-1-linux-x64.tar.gz

Deprecation notices​

32-bit support​

Support for 32-bit x86 GNU/Linux and x86 Windows was dropped in 2022. Support for 32-bit Arm GNU/Linux (armv7l) will be preserved for a while, due to the large user base of 32-bit Raspberry Pi systems.

GNU/Linux minimum requirements​

Support for RedHat 7 was dropped in 2022 and the minimum requirement was raised to GLIBC 2.27, available starting with Ubuntu 18, Debian 10 and RedHat 8.

Download analytics​

Credit to Shields IO for the badges and to Somsubhra/github-release-stats for the individual file counters.