GNU Spotlight September 2022

Seventeen new GNU releases in the last month (as of October 03, 2022):

• autoconf-archive-2022.09.03: Autoconf Archive is a collection of over 450 new macros for Autoconf, greatly expanding the domain of its functionality. These macros have been contributed as free software by the community.
• bash-5.2: Bash is the shell, or command-line interpreter, of the GNU system. It is compatible with the Bourne Shell, but it also integrates useful features from the Korn Shell and the C Shell and new improvements of its own. It allows command-line editing, unlimited command history, shell functions and aliases, and job control while still allowing most sh scripts to be run without modification.
• emacs-28.2: GNU Emacs is an extensible and highly customizable text editor. It is based on an Emacs Lisp interpreter with extensions for text editing. Emacs has been extended in essentially all areas of computing, giving rise to a vast array of packages supporting, e.g., email, IRC and XMPP messaging, spreadsheets, remote server editing, and much more. Emacs includes extensive documentation on all aspects of the system, from basic editing to writing large Lisp programs. It has full Unicode support for nearly all human languages.
• gama-2.23: GNU Gama is a program for the adjustment of geodetic networks. It is useful in measurements where Global Positioning System (GPS) is not available, such as underground. It features the ability to adjust in local Cartesian coordinates as well as partial support for adjustments in global coordinate systems.
• gawk-5.2.0: Gawk is the GNU implementation of Awk, a specialized programming language for the easy manipulation of formatted text, such as tables of data. Gawk features many extensions beyond the traditional implementation, including network access, sorting, and large libraries.
• gnunet-0.17.6: GNUnet is a framework for secure peer-to-peer networking. The high-level goal is to provide a strong foundation of free software for a global, distributed network that provides security and privacy. GNUnet in that sense aims to replace the current internet protocol stack. Along with an application for secure publication of files, it has grown to include all kinds of basic applications for the foundation of a GNU internet.
• gnutls-3.7.8: 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.
• grep-3.8: grep is a tool for finding text inside files. Text is found by matching a pattern provided by the user in one or many files. The pattern may be provided as a basic or extended regular expression, or as fixed strings. By default, the matching text is simply printed to the screen, however the output can be greatly customized to include, for example, line numbers. GNU grep offers many extensions over the standard utility, including, for example, recursive directory searching.
• gsasl-2.2.0: GNU SASL is an implementation of the Simple Authentication and Security Layer framework. On network servers such as IMAP or SMTP servers, SASL is used to handle client/server authentication. This package contains both a library and a command-line tool to access the library.
• guile-ncurses-3.1: guile-ncurses provides Guile language bindings for the ncurses library.
• linux-libre-6.0-gnu: GNU Linux-Libre is a free (as in freedom) variant of the Linux kernel. It has been modified to remove all non-free binary blobs.
• mtools-4.0.41: GNU Mtools is a set of utilities for accessing MS-DOS disks from a GNU or Unix system. It supports long file names and multiple disk formats. It also supports some FAT-specific features such as volume labels and FAT-specific file attributes.
• parallel-20220922: 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.
• readline-8.2: The GNU readline library allows users to edit command lines as they are typed in. It can maintain a searchable history of previously entered commands, letting you easily recall, edit and re-enter past commands. It features both Emacs-like and vi-like keybindings, making its usage comfortable for anyone.
• shepherd-0.9.2: 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.
• unifont-15.0.01: GNU Unifont is a bitmap font covering essentially all of Unicode's Basic Multilingual Plane. The package also includes utilities to ease adding new glyphs to the font.
• units-2.22: GNU Units converts numeric quantities between units of measure. It can handle scale changes through adaptive usage of standard scale prefixes (micro-, kilo-, etc.). It can also handle nonlinear conversions such as Fahrenheit to Celsius. Its interpreter is powerful enough to be used effectively as a scientific calculator.

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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.