Automake 1.19 has been released, offering updated utilities for automatically generating makefiles that adhere to the GNU project coding standards.
The new version includes bug fixes and introduces the autoconf macro AM_OPTIONAL_AUTOMAKE. This macro provides the option to process specified “dist-XXX” options when running the “make dist” command. This means that it is now possible to skip creating archives without triggering an error if the necessary compression utilities are not available on the system.
For example, if the settings include dist-zip, dist-xz, and dist-zstd, but the zip, xz, and zstd utilities are missing, the “make dist” operation will not fail. This enhancement is particularly useful for situations where certain compression tools are not installed on the system.