About the xPack GNU M4

The project

The xPack GNU M4 project is part of the xPack Reproducible Build Framework and is hosted on GitHub as xpack-dev-tools/m4-xpack, part of the xPack Binary Development Tools.

This project currently functions as a supplementary tool for building the main xPack Development Tools. Since these tools are exclusively built on macOS and GNU/Linux, to reduce maintenance efforts, for now there are no Windows binaries. However, the project is versatile and can be used in any builds; if necessary, Windows binaries can be added in future releases.

Project history

The project was created in November 2022.

November 2022

The first xPack GNU M4 release was v1.4.19-1.

August 2024

The project underwent a comprehensive restructuring. To streamline the top package.json by showcasing only user-related definitions and concealing build-related ones, all build-related files were relocated to the build-assets folder. Furthermore, the development Git branch was renamed to xpack-development for enhanced clarity.

The web site

The initial web site was launched in February 2023 as a sub-site in the xPack web site. It used the Jekyll Doc Theme 6.0 by Tom Johnson.

In August 2024, as part of the project restructuring, the website content was migrated from the xPack Jekyll sub-site to a local Docusaurus configuration stored in the website folder. To ensure continuity, HTML <meta> redirects were added to the old pages. Additionally, a GitHub Action was implemented to automatically publish the site upon any pushes to the website Git branch.

The author

This project is currently maintained by Liviu Ionescu (ilg-ul), a senior computer engineer, with expertise in C++/C embedded systems, RTOSes, build tools, operating systems, compilers and Internet technologies.

He can be reached at <ilg@livius.net>. Please note, this email address is provided as a courtesy. For all correspondence related to the xPack GNU M4 project, kindly use the project support page).