November GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali featuring twelve new GNU releases: Coreutils, Gnuastro, and more!

• binutils-2.45.1: GNU Binutils is a collection of tools for working with binary files. Perhaps the most notable are ld, a linker, and as, an assembler. Other tools include programs to display binary profiling information, list the strings in a binary file, and utilities for working with archives. The bfd library for working with executable and object formats is also included.
  
• coreutils-9.9: GNU Coreutils includes all of the basic command-line tools that are expected in a POSIX system. These provide the basic file, shell and text manipulation functions of the GNU system. Most of these tools offer extended functionality beyond that which is outlined in the POSIX standard.
  
• ed-1.22.3: Ed is a line-oriented text editor: rather than offering an overview of a document, ed performs editing one line at a time. It can be executed both interactively and via shell scripts. Its method of command input allows complex tasks to be performed in an automated way. GNU ed offers several extensions over the standard utility.
  
• gnuastro-0.24: The GNU Astronomy Utilities (Gnuastro) is an official GNU package consisting of various programs and library functions for the manipulation and analysis of astronomical data.
  
• gnunet-0.26.1: 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.
  
• gnupg-2.5.14: The GNU Privacy Guard is a complete implementation of the OpenPGP standard. It is used to encrypt and sign data and communication. It features powerful key management and the ability to access public key servers. It includes several libraries: libassuan (IPC between GnuPG components), libgpg-error (centralized GnuPG error values), and libskba (working with X.509 certificates and CMS data).
  
• gnutls-3.8.11: 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.
  
• guile-3.0.11: Guile is the GNU Ubiquitous Intelligent Language for Extensions, the official extension language of the GNU system. It is an implementation of the Scheme language which can be easily embedded in other applications to provide a convenient means of extending the functionality of the application without requiring the source code to be rewritten.
  
• nano-8.7: GNU nano is a small and simple text editor for use in a terminal. Besides basic editing, it supports: undo/redo, syntax highlighting, spell-checking, justifying, auto-indentation, bracket matching, interactive search-and-replace (with regular expressions), and the editing of multiple files.
  
• parallel-20251122: 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.
  
• taler-1.2: Taler provides a payment system that makes privacy-friendly online transactions fast and easy.
  
• unifont-17.0.03: 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.

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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.