The Fast Lexical Analyzer - scanner generator for lexing in C and C++
This is the final release in the flex 2.5.X series. Generaly, this release is here for historical purposes only. You most likely want to use the most current release of flex. Any bug reports against this release of flex will be prioritized knowing that multiple years of flex development have happened after this release. That is, the response is most likely to be "Please use the current version of flex."
** build
flex-2.6.4.tar.gz *** The indent target now knows about flex's new (as of 2.6.0) layout. The indent rules it would apply are not correct and do need to be fixed.
*** The files included in the flex distribution are now built by the version of flex that is included in the distribution.
*** The configure script has a better idea of which headers are required to build flex. It will also error when missing functions are detected.
*** We have lowered the versions of automake and gettext that configure.ac lists as required for building flex. In autogen.sh, we now check for how to call libtoolize and use what we find in the rest of the script.
*** Since files in lib/ are picked up as needed by src/, we no longer generate a Makefile for that directory.
*** Flex can be cross compiled.
** documentation
*** Some typos were removed from the manual.
** scanner
*** Some minor performance enhancements.
*** We honor user defined yy_* macros again. We are also more careful to not leak macro definitions into header files.
*** A number of portability fixes were introduced so building flex is more reliable on more platforms. Additionally, outdated function calls were removed.
*** When building the flex executable itself, %# comments from flex.skl are removed when generating the C source code array. This reduces the size of flex.
** test suite
*** All scripts in the test suite are now run by $(SHELL) and the needed portability fixes have been included.
*** Test suite dependencies are handled much better. This only matters if you are actively developing flex or its test suite.
*** Tests that depend on platform dependent features now properly skip when those platforms are not present.
*** When running "make check", you can now pas V=0 to silence more of the build. This is useful when you're less connncerned about the
details of building and linking the test programs themselves.
flex v2.6.0 release
** scanner
*** several bug fixes resolved problems introduced in recent flex versions regarding processing of comments, literals and various quoting scenarios.
*** If the path to m4 was sufficiently long, a buffer overflow could occur. This has been resolved. The fix also removes dependence on the constant PATH_MAX.
** build
*** A new configure option --disable-bootstrap changes the behavior of the build system when building flex. The default "--enable-bootstrap" behavior is to build flex, then to use that flex to build flex again. With --disable-bootstrap, the scanner is simply built by sedding the scanner source. This is friendlier to cross compilation.
*** The compatibility functions in lib/ are no longer built as a library. Instead, they are built as $(LIBOBJ) objects. This is simpler and friendlier to cross compilation.
*** It is now possible to build flex without building the accompanying libfl. This is friendlier to cross compilation. See the --disable-libfl option to configure. Resolves #99.
*** the PIC version of libfl was not correctly built. It is no longer included in the build/installation targets of flex since it was unused.
*** the distributed man page is only rebuilt when the relevant source files change or when the binary doesn't exist. In particular, this is friendlier to cross compilation. Resolves #108
** test
*** the shell scripts in the test suite are more portable across different shell implementations.
** flex internals ** flex internals
*** a segfalt involving yyrestart(NULL) has been fixed
*** flex should now handle quoting when mixed with m4 processing correctly
*** flex handles [[' and]]' correctly
*** flex no longer generates non-ANSI code
*** more compilation warnings were squashed in generated scanners
*** prevented a buffer overflow that could occur when input buffers were the exact wrong size
** test suite
*** input filenames on MSWindows are now calculated correctly
*** general code cleanups in a number of tests now make the test suite compile much more cleanly
** build system
*** the xz archive has been replaced with an lzip archive
*** a new option to configure --enable-warnings to encapsulate passing of warning-related flags which is useful in testing flex
*** make indent now works for out of source builds
*** Portability warnings when generating Makefile.in files are now suppressed; they were just noise and the use of GNU extensions in Makefile.{am,in,} was intentional and well known.
** bugs
*** resolved gh#67
** new sv translation from the translation project ** flex internals
*** a segfalt involving yyrestart(NULL) has been fixed
*** flex should now handle quoting when mixed with m4 processing correctly
*** flex handles [[' and]]' correctly
*** flex no longer generates non-ANSI code
*** more compilation warnings were squashed in generated scanners
*** prevented a buffer overflow that could occur when input buffers were the exact wrong size
** test suite
*** input filenames on MSWindows are now calculated correctly
*** general code cleanups in a number of tests now make the test suite compile much more cleanly
** build system
*** the xz archive has been replaced with an lzip archive
*** a new option to configure --enable-warnings to encapsulate passing of warning-related flags which is useful in testing flex
*** make indent now works for out of source builds
*** Portability warnings when generating Makefile.in files are now suppressed; they were just noise and the use of GNU extensions in Makefile.{am,in,} was intentional and well known.
** bugs
*** resolved gh#67
** new sv translation from the translation project
*** a segfalt involving yyrestart(NULL) has been fixed
*** flex should now handle quoting when mixed with m4 processing correctly
*** flex handles [[' and]]' correctly
*** flex no longer generates non-ANSI code
*** more compilation warnings were squashed in generated scanners
*** prevented a buffer overflow that could occur when input buffers were the exact wrong size
** test suite
*** input filenames on MSWindows are now calculated correctly
*** general code cleanups in a number of tests now make the test suite compile much more cleanly
** build system
*** the xz archive has been replaced with an lzip archive
*** a new option to configure --enable-warnings to encapsulate passing of warning-related flags which is useful in testing flex
*** make indent now works for out of source builds
*** Portability warnings when generating Makefile.in files are now suppressed; they were just noise and the use of GNU extensions in Makefile.{am,in,} was intentional and well known.
** bugs
*** resolved gh#67
** new sv translation from the translation project
** flex resources
*** The flex project is now hosted at github. Consider this a "period of transition". In particular, you should start at https://github.com/westes/flex for the flex codebase, issue tracking and pull requests.
*** New releases of flex are to be found at https://github.com/westes/flex/releases.
** flex internals
*** Flex now uses more modern and more standard names for variable types. There's more work to be done on that front yet, though.
*** A number of compiler warnings have been remedied.
*** Line directives should now work as expected and be absent when that is expected.
** test suite
*** When running the test suite, c++ files are compiled with the c++ header inside the flex distribution, rather than relying on the build system's flex header , which might not be installed yet or which might be out of date with respect to what flex tests expect.
*** Some portability fixes in the test suite such as opening files for reading in binary mode
** Building flex
*** The file src/scan.c asdistributed with flex source is now built with the current version of flex. Occasionally this had to be done manually to pick up new flex features. It's now just a part of flex's build system.
*** The pdf version of the manual is no longer distributed with flex, although if you have the texinfo package installed, you can still build it.
*** lots of general build system cleanup
*** the build system tries a bit harder to find libtoolize and texi2dvi.
*** When help2man and texi2dvi are missing, the error messages are now much more helpful.
** bug fixes
*** resolved github issues #53, #54, #55, #61.
*** Resolved sf bugs #128, #129, #155, #160, #184, #187, #195.