GNU News Archives

GNU Shepherd is the Guile-written service manager for handling daemons that is most notably used by the GNU Guix project as an alternative to the likes of SysV and systemd. With today's GNU Shepherd 0.10.2 some long-standing issues have finally been resolved.

GNU Boot 20230717 has been released as the fork of Libreboot that in turn is a downstream of Coreboot focused on providing system firmware support only where they are fully free software. With GNU Boot the game is upped further by removing select motherboard ports and documentation where they do not comply with the GNU System Distribution Guidelines.

GRUB 2.12 had been talked about for a mid-2022 release while one year later we are finally greeted by the first release candidate for this next major open-source bootloader release.

For those on the three-year-old GCC 10 compiler series, it's really time to move to a newer GNU Compiler Collection release for enjoying the latest language support, new hardware features, various optimizations, enhanced diagnostics, and more. But for those still bound to GCC 10 for whatever reason, GCC 10.5 was released today as one final update in the branch.

GNU Binutils 2.41 was branched today in its Git repository in preparations for releasing this collection of binary utilities widely relied upon by Linux and other platforms.

The in-development GCC 14 compiler has added support for the MIPS16e2 processor ISA.

Following yesterday's release of Linux 6.4, the FSFLA team has released GNU Linux-libre 6.4-gnu as the newest version of this downstream kernel that aims for "100% freedom" with removing any kernel remnants that depend upon non-free-software microcode/firmware or other binary blobs as well as removing the ability to load proprietary kernel modules.

Similar to LLVM Clang 17 adding -std=c++26 support as the open-source compiler begins work on the next major revision of the C++ programming language, the GCC 14 compiler code has now also added the -std=c++26 compiler option.

While a few years late compared to many other open-source projects adopting a Code of Conduct, the GCC Steering Committee has now adopted a Code of Conduct "CoC" for this open-source compiler project.

Stemming from looking at the generated x264 video encode binary and some performance inefficiencies, SUSE engineers have worked out AVX-512 fully masked vectorization support for the GCC 14 development code.

While GCC 13 saw its first stable release several weeks back, for those taking their time in moving to major new compiler releases and still relying on the two-year-old GCC 11 series, out today is the GCC 11.4 point release.

The GNU Assembler "Gas" as part of the GNU Binutils collection has landed support for Intel FRED and LKGS instructions.

With development of the MIPS architecture having officially ended two years ago in favor of focusing on RISC-V for future CPU designs and the overall decline of that CPU architecture, it's been years since the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) has seen its MIPS code well maintained. However, now a capable developer has stepped up willing to serve as the GCC maintainer for MIPS.

GNU Shepherd 0.10 is out today as the latest release for this GNU-backed service manager and init system that is written in Guile.

While GCC 13.1 recently released as the first major stable release of the GCC 13 series, for those continuing to depend upon last year's GCC 12 stable series there is a new point release available today.

Dragora remains one of the few Linux distributions endorsed by the Free Software Foundation and is a from-scratch distribution focused on providing only free software... The last stable release of the Linux distribution was Dragora 2.2 back in 2012 while out today is Dragora 3.0 Beta 2, which itself is coming three and a half years since the prior beta.

GCC 13.1 has been released as the first stable version of GCC 13 as this annual feature release to the GNU Compiler Collection.

As expected following the GCC 13 release branching this week, the first release candidate of what will be the premiere GCC 13.1 stable release is now available.

The GNU Compiler Collection 13 codebase has no more P1 bugs, which are regressions of the highest priority, and as such the GCC 13 codebase was branched today with plans of issuing GCC 13.1-rc1 likely in the next day and hopefully releasing GCC 13.1 as the first stable release of the GCC 13 series next week.

Earlier this week Intel sent out AMX-COMPLEX support for the GCC compiler as a new instruction set extension for Xeon Scalable Granite Rapids. That enablement work was already merged for the imminent GCC 13 release while now AMX-COMPLEX support has also been added to GNU Binutils.

While the release of GCC 13.1 as the first stable GCC 13 compiler is due out in the next few weeks, ahead of that milestone dozens of Rust "gccrs" patches were merged today for furthering along that new language support.

Going back to late 2021 was the initial GCC compiler patch for "Ampere-1" for that next-gen AArch64 server processor while last year this successor to Ampere Altra (Max) was formally announced under the AmpereOne brand. That initial compiler support appeared in GCC 12 while ahead of the GCC 13 release in the coming weeks has been some last minute tuning for the AmpereOne cost table.

While GCC 13 is working its way toward its official GCC 13.1 stable release in the next few weeks, with this week's openSUSE Tumbleweed rolling-release updates it has already begun switching over to this major annual compiler update.

GNU Coreutils 9.2 is out today as the newest feature update to this widely relied upon collection of core utilities commonly found on Linux systems as well as other platforms.

GNU Octave 8.1 is out today as the newest feature release to this free software for scientific computing and numerical computations that remains a leading open-source alternative to MATLAB.

A set of patches sent out this morning lay out the initial foundation for RISC-V auto-vectorization support within the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC).

Merged back in December was the initial GCC Rust front-end "gccrs" for the GCC 13 compiler that will be released as stable within the next month or two. Squeezing today into the GCC 13 code-base is an additional 103 patches for this Rust front-end.

Building off yesterday's release of Linux 6.2, the GNU Linux-libre 6.2 kernel was published today by the GNU FSFLA folks maintaining this kernel downstream that strips out driver support dependent upon non-free software firmware/assets as well as dropping the ability to load closed-source kernel modules.

GDB 13.1 is out today as the newest version of the GNU Debugger for this open-source code debugging solution.

Arthur Cohen with Embecosm presented at the FOSDEM developer conference earlier this month on gccrs, the ongoing effort to provide a Rust language front-end to the GCC compiler. While the GCC Rust front-end has been merged for the upcoming GCC 13 release, it's not yet in a state that will really be usable to most Rust developers yet as an alternative to Rust's official LLVM-based compiler.

The GNU Debugger "GDB" has landed initial support for being able to debug AMDGPU/ROCm platform code with a preliminary focus on HIP programs.

As scheduled, version 2.37 of the GNU C Library "glibc" was released this morning.

The GCC 13 code compiler has entered its stage four of development today where the focus now is only on regression fixes until eliminating all the highest priority regressions so that the GCC 13.1 stable release can then happen in the next 2~3 months.

Out today is GNU Binutils 2.40 as the latest feature update to this wide collection of key binary utilities found on Linux systems and other platforms.

Following GCC Rust being merged and the Modula-2 front-end, a developer hopes to restore the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) Java front-end, GCJ.

Merged today to the GNU Debugger (GDB) is initial support for the Debug Adapter Protocol (DAP) that is a JSON-RPC interface for use by integrated development environments (IDEs) to better communicate with debuggers.

With the start of the new year also came the branching of GNU Binutils 2.40 ahead of its expected stable release around early February.

Yesterday it was the GCC Rust front-end "gccrs" being merged into the GNU Compiler Collection codebase for GCC 13. Today the Modula-2 language front-end also made it over the finish line.

Following last week's approval with the GCC Rust v4 patches for them to be merged, all of the "gccrs" code was upstreamed this morning for GNU Compiler Collection 13.

Following the release last night of the Linux 6.1 kernel by Linus Torvalds, the GNU crew has released their GNU Linux-libre 6.1 kernel that is derived from those sources while continuing to strip out code dependent upon non-free firmware/microcode and blocking the ability to load proprietary kernel modules.

In addition to today seeing the GCC Rust front-end being declared ready for merging with its latest patch series sent out today, the Modula-2 front-end sent out its third revision which is also expected to now be merged as another new programming language front-end for GCC 13.

Being merged this week to GNU Binutils is initial support for reading and writing to new "SFrame" sections of binaries.

As of Monday the GCC 13 compiler has concluded its stage one feature development and has progressed onto stage three that now just focuses on bug fixing.

For those compiling their programs using the common "-O2" optimization level as is used for the production builds by many Linux distributions and other software vendors, small loop unrolling is being enabled at this level for GCC 13. Enabling small loop unrolling with -O2 should help the performance in some areas of modern Intel and AMD CPUs.

Texinfo as the GNU typesetting syntax and the project's preferred documentation format is out with a major update.

GNU Make 4.4 is now available as the first major release in more than two and a half years. GNU Make 4.4 has many improvements to this important build automation tool that is still widely used by countless free software projects.

Just last week I wrote about Glibc preparing more optimizations for AVX-512 CPUs with implementing more C library functions in EVEX512 enhanced vector extension versions. This week there is more EVEX512 function work.

An updated version of the Rust "gccrs" front-end for the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) was sent out today for review. The GCC Rust "v3" patches address developer comments raised during earlier review as they try to get this new Rust programming language support merged in time for GCC 13.

The widely depended upon GNU C Library "glibc" has seen another round of optimization work for benefiting those with AVX-512 processors from Intel or now on the AMD side too with Zen 4.

Brought up in September was the proposal of moving the GNU toolchain infrastructure under the Linux Foundation's IT services. The GNU Toolchain leaders have now come out formally in support of this proposed move.