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xPack xPack GNU M4 v1.4.20-1 released

· 2 min read

Version 1.4.20-1.1 is a new release; it follows the upstream release.

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 and arm64).

Raspberry Pi

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

Download

The binary files are available from GitHub Releases.

Prerequisites

  • x64 macOS: 11.0 or later
  • arm64 macOS: 11.0 or later
  • x64 GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.28 or higher (like Ubuntu 20 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
  • arm64 GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.28 or higher (like Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu 20 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)

Install

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

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/m4@1.4.20-1.1 -verbose

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

Compliance

The xPack GNU M4 is based on the official GNU M4 sources.

The current version is based on:

  • GNU M4 version 1.4.20 from 10 May 2025.

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 from the project web site:

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.

For the prerequisites and more details on the build procedure, please see the Maintainer Info 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:

eec5cca7634e7ea463f044fb3d233a472de62932f1889f12fd8ca06ba5b7609e
xpack-m4-1.4.20-1-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

1329aa4237a933fe7f63e0c5922ea271a79a7d56ab7e1424f77f949f838777b5
xpack-m4-1.4.20-1-darwin-x64.tar.gz

bc5fa98051abab8a8410499d89065c3554be7c1ca0574e85367a14d0764cfdfb
xpack-m4-1.4.20-1-linux-arm64.tar.gz

f593eeefafc59f33c323ce350b50e91f7c58917abef3320c3b118facbf370725
xpack-m4-1.4.20-1-linux-x64.tar.gz

Deprecation notices

GNU/Linux minimum requirements

The minimum requirement is GLIBC 2.28, available starting with Ubuntu 20, Debian 10 and RedHat 8. Support for RedHat 7 was dropped in 2022. Support for Ubuntu 18 was dropped in 2025.

32-bit support

Support for 32-bit x86 GNU/Linux and x86 Windows was dropped in 2022 and for 32-bit Arm GNU/Linux in 2025.

Analytics

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