Installation

Weitere Installationsbefehle

macOS

Homebrewverifiziert · 100%

brew install m4

provider-native install command

Überblick

Paketzusammenfassung

Macro processing language

Projektlinks

Homepage

Befehle und Aliase

m4

Verlauf

Projektgeschichte und Nutzung

GNU M4 is the GNU implementation of the traditional Unix `m4` macro processor. It expands built-in and user-defined macros while copying input to output and is used both directly and as infrastructure for other build tools.

Projektgeschichte

The m4 lineage is older than GNU: the GNU manual traces macro-language ideas to 1950s and 1960s work by Alan Perlis, Doug McIlroy, Christopher Strachey, and Bell Labs macro processors such as GPM and M6.

Kernighan and Ritchie developed the original `m4` at Bell Labs in 1977. GNU M4 was released by Rene Seindal in 1990 to remove artificial limits in many traditional implementations, including line length, macro size, and macro-count limits.

Francois Pinard maintained GNU M4 in the early 1990s and released version 1.4 in 1994. After a long stable period, maintenance resumed with Paul Eggert, Gary V. Vaughan, Eric Blake, and later releases in the 1.4 series through 1.4.20.

Adoptionsgeschichte

The GNU manual notes that `m4` is widely available on Unix systems and standardized by POSIX. Many users install GNU M4 indirectly because GNU Autoconf requires it to generate configure scripts.

The supplied package-manager facts show the package across Homebrew, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Alpine, Nix, MacPorts, Scoop, and openSUSE, which matches its role as a baseline development dependency.

Wie es verwendet wird

GNU M4 can be invoked as `m4 [option...] [file...]`. It supports macro expansion, file inclusion, shell-command execution, arithmetic, text manipulation, and recursion.

In package builds, direct human-written M4 macros are less common than Autoconf usage, but maintainers still care about GNU M4 compatibility because configure-generation failures often trace back to macro behavior.

Warum Paket-Nerds sich dafür interessieren

GNU M4 is one of the quiet pieces of the Autotools stack: many source packages do not need it at runtime, but build-from-VCS workflows and autoreconf pipelines often need the GNU implementation.

It matters to package maintainers because POSIX `m4`, vendor `m4`, and GNU M4 have historically differed in limits and extensions, and Autoconf intentionally standardized on GNU M4 to avoid those limitations.

Zeitleiste

1977: Original Bell Labs m4 described by Kernighan and Ritchie
1990: Rene Seindal released GNU M4
1994: GNU M4 1.4 released as a long-lived stable version
2004: 1.4.1 and 1.4.2 addressed long-standing bugs
2025: GNU M4 1.4.20 released

Related projects

GNU Autoconf is one of GNU M4's biggest users and requires GNU M4 as its macro engine.
Traditional Unix m4 implementations, GPM, M6, M5, and Ratfor-related preprocessors are part of the historical macro-processor lineage.

Quellen

Sicherheitslage

Risikostufe: grün

narrow executable package without higher-risk signals.

Risikoklassifikator

grün Risiko · niedrig Konfidenz · appliance

Warum

narrow executable package without higher-risk signals

Signale

metadata:no-higher-risk-signals

Installationsverhalten

Es wurden keine Homebrew-Bottle-Metadaten erfasst.

Empfohlene Prüfung

Prüfe vor unbeaufsichtigter Agent-Nutzung, ob das Tool Klartext-Credentials liest, Remote-Zustand schreibt, Artefakte veröffentlicht oder Plugins ausführt.

Executables

Installierte Executables

Befehl	Art	Sichtbarkeit	Hinweis
`m4`	Executable	indexiertes Executable	Aus dem lokalen Executable-Index erkannt.

Aktualität

Version und Aktualität

Diese Signale trennen das Alter der Seitengenerierung, Aktivität des Paketmanagers und Upstream-Release-Vergleich. Versionsrückstand wird nur gemeldet, wenn eine Evidenz-URL und vergleichbare Versionen vorhanden sind.

Seite generiert2026-08-03

Manager-Version1.4.21

Manager aktualisiert2026-07-17

lokale Datenunbekannt

Upstreamnicht verfügbar

neueste erkannte Versionnicht erkannt

OKEs wurden keine Aktualitätswarnungen generiert.

Installationsmetadaten

Paketmetadaten

Paketschlüssel	brew:m4
Version	1.4.21
Paketmanager	Homebrew
Homepage	https://www.gnu.org/software/m4/
Zuletzt aktualisiert	2026-07-17T16:54:41-04:00
Pulse	updated
Bottle	nicht erfasst
Dienst	keiner deklariert

Paketgraph

Links stammen aus dem lokalen Paketbeziehungsgraph, Ergänzungen, Abhängigkeitskanten, Ecosystem-Matches und Paket-Hub-Mitgliedschaft.

Quellspur

Aus Repository-Daten generiert

Diese Seite wird von av-web aus dem privaten Paket-SQLite-Artefakt bereitgestellt, das scripts/generate-pkg-sqlite.py erstellt.

Combined YAML source

View the package source record on GitHub.

combined/m4.yml

Verwendete Quellen

Geiger risk classifier
Nucleus package database
curated package history
pkgdb category and tag curation

m4 mit Homebrew installieren