GNU Spotlight February 2023

Eighteen new GNU releases in the last month (as of February 28, 2023):

• anastasis-0.3.2: GNU Anastasis is a free software protocol and implementation that allows users to securely deposit core secrets with a public set of escrow providers, and allows users to recover these secrets if their original copies are lost.
• autoconf-archive-2023.02.20: 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.
• g-golf-0.8.0-a.3: G-Golf (Gnome: (Guile Object Library for)) is a library for developing modern applications in Guile Scheme. It comprises a direct binding to the GObject Introspection API and higher-level functionality for importing Gnome libraries and making GObject classes (and methods) available in Guile's object-oriented programming system, GOOPS.
• gama-2.24: 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.
• gdb-13.1: 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.
• glibc-2.37: The GNU C Library is the standard C library of the GNU system. It defines the system calls and other basic functionality necessary to write programs in the C language. It handles low-level functionality that communicates with the kernel, such as process and file management, as well as higher-level functionality such as string manipulation or command-line argument handling.
• gnunet-0.19.3: 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-3.8.0: 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.
• health-4.2.0: GNU Health is a free medical software system, including support for electronic medical records (EMR), a hospital information system (HIS), and health information system. It supports both Spanish and English interfaces. It has been adopted by the United Nations University for implementation and training, as well as by several hospitals and health ministries around the world.
• jami-20230206.0: Jami is a GNU package for universal communication that respects the freedom and privacy of its users. Jami uses distributed hash tables for establishing communication, whose design avoids centralized storage of users' registries and personal data.
• libmicrohttpd-0.9.76: GNU libmicrohttpd is a small, embeddable HTTP server implemented as a C library. It makes it easy to run an HTTP server as part of another application. The library is fully HTTP 1.1 compliant. It can listen on multiple ports, supports four different threading models, and supports IPv6. It also features security features such as basic and digest authentication and support for SSL3 and TLS.
• lightning-2.2.1: GNU Lightning is a library that generates assembly language code at run-time. Thus, it is useful in creating Just-In-Time compilers. It abstracts over the target CPU by exposing a standardized RISC instruction set to the clients.
• lilypond-2.24.1: GNU LilyPond is a music typesetter, which produces high-quality sheet music. Music is input in a text file containing control sequences which are interpreted by LilyPond to produce the final document. It is extendable with Guile.
• linux-libre-6.2-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.
• make-4.4.1: Make is a program that is used to control the production of executables or other files from their source files. The process is controlled from a Makefile, in which the developer specifies how each file is generated from its source. It has powerful dependency resolution and the ability to determine when files have to be regenerated after their sources change. GNU make offers many powerful extensions over the standard utility.
• mes-0.24.2: 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.
• moe-1.13: GNU Moe is a powerful-but-simple-to-use text editor. It works in a modeless manner, and features an intuitive set of key-bindings that assign a degree of severity to each key; for example, key combinations with the Alt key are for harmless commands like cursor movements while combinations with the Control key are for commands that will modify the text. Moe features multiple windows, unlimited undo/redo, unlimited line length, global search and replace, and more.
• parallel-20230222: 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.

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 most reliably from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/. Optionally, you may find faster download speeds at a mirror geographically close to you by choosing from the list of mirrors published at https://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html, or you may use https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ to be automatically redirected to a (hopefully) nearby and up-to-date mirror.

This month, we welcome long-time GNU hacker Jose E. Marchesi together with Vladimir Mezentsev as maintainers of the new GNU package gprofng-gui.

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.