使用 Homebrew 安装 m4

项目链接

• 主页

命令和别名

• m4

项目历史

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.

采用历史

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.

使用方式

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.

为什么软件包爱好者会关心

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.

时间线

• 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.

来源

• https://www.gnu.org/software/m4/
• https://www.gnu.org/software/m4/manual/
• https://www.gnu.org/software/m4/manual/html_node/History.html
• https://www.gnu.org/software/m4/manual/html_node/Intro.html
• source_facts.package-manager