GNU Spotlight May 2022

Originally published on the Free Software Foundation's community blog:
May GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali: Eleven new GNU releases!

Eleven new GNU releases in the last month (as of May 29, 2022):

  • gcc-12.1.0: GCC is the GNU Compiler Collection. It provides compiler front-ends for several languages, including C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Java, Ada, and Go. It also includes runtime support libraries for these languages.
  • gcc-9.5.0: See above for description of GCC.
  • gdb-12.1: GDB is the GNU debugger. With it, you can monitor what a program is doing while it runs or what it was doing just before a crash. It allows you to specify the runtime conditions, to define breakpoints, and to change how the program is running to try to fix bugs. It can be used to debug programs written in C, C++, Ada, Objective-C, Pascal and more.
  • gnutls-3.7.6: GnuTLS is a secure communications library implementing the SSL, TLS and DTLS protocols. It is provided in the form of a C library to support the protocols, as well as to parse and write X.509, PKCS 12, OpenPGP and other required structures.
  • hyperbole-8.0.0: Hyperbole is a programmable information and hypertext system for GNU Emacs. It allows hypertext to be embedded within documents, mail messages and news articles. This permits mouse-based control of the displayed information.
  • libiconv-1.17: libiconv provides an implementation of the iconv function for systems that lack it. iconv is used to convert between character encodings in a program. It supports a wide variety of different encodings.
  • linux-libre-5.18-gnu: GNU Linux-Libre is a free (as in freedom) variant of the kernel Linux. It has been modified to remove all non-free binary blobs.
  • mes-0.24: GNU Mes aims to help create full source bootstrapping for GNU/Linux systems such as Guix System. It features a mutual self-hosting Scheme interpreter written in a simple C, and a Nyacc-based C compiler written in GNU Guile-compatible Scheme. The Mes C library supports bootstrapping GCC.
  • parallel-20220522: GNU Parallel is a tool for executing shell jobs in parallel using one or more computers. Jobs can consist of single commands or of scripts and they are executed on lists of files, hosts, users or other items.
  • shepherd-0.9.1: The GNU Shepherd is a daemon-managing daemon, meaning that it supervises the execution of system services, replacing similar functionality found in typical init systems. It provides dependency-handling through a convenient interface and is based on GNU Guile.
  • wget-2.0.1: GNU Wget is a non-interactive tool for fetching files using the HTTP, HTTPS and FTP protocols. It can resume interrupted downloads, use file name wild cards, supports proxies and cookies, and it can convert absolute links in downloaded documents to relative links.

For announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list: https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu.

To download: nearly all GNU software is available from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/, or preferably one of its mirrors from https://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html. You can use the URL https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ to be automatically redirected to a (hopefully) nearby and up-to-date mirror.

A number of GNU packages, as well as the GNU operating system as a whole, are looking for maintainers and other assistance: please see https://www.gnu.org/server/takeaction.html#unmaint if you'd like to help. The general page on how to help GNU is at https://www.gnu.org/help/help.html.

If you have a working or partly working program that you'd like to offer to the GNU project as a GNU package, see https://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html.

As always, please feel free to write to me, bandali@gnu.org, with any GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.