Release of GnuCOBOL 3.2

[Simon Sobisch]

Hello!

More than two and a half year after GnuCOBOL 3.1.2 the GnuCOBOL 
developers are proud to announce the formal release of GnuCOBOL 3.2.


What is GnuCOBOL
================

GnuCOBOL is a free, modern COBOL compiler.
It translates COBOL into intermediate C and compiles the code using a 
native C compiler (preferably GCC, but not limited to it).

More information about GnuCOBOL can be found at
https://www.gnu.org/software/gnucobol/


Noteworthy changes
==================

The amount of features are too much to note, but you can skip over the 
attached NEWS file to investigate them, here are some of the highlights:

* improved dialect handling including changed defaults to better match
  the selected dialect (see NEWS if you compile with any -std to know
  more about the implications), a complete new dialect GCOS and support
  for more COBOL statements, intrinsic functions and syntax from both
  "old" and new dialects

* highly improved run-times for several statements, along with
  less memory usage, especially if runtime checks are enabled

* fileio changes to support LINE-SEQUENTIAL per COBOL2023 and runtime
  options to change the way files are handled, see NEWS and runtime.cfg

* improvements for source-level debugging via GDB and coredump support

* improvements for reproducible builds

GnuCOBOL 3.x keeps full compatibility to GnuCOBOL 2.2, you can therefore 
use old COBOL modules without recompile, if needed, but may need to 
adjust your configuration per NEWS entry.


Getting the Software
====================

Official source kits can be downloaded from
   https://ftp.gnu.org/gnucobol/
but we suggest to use a mirror a nearby mirror for higher
download bandwidth:
   https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/gnucobol

NEWS
Description: Text document

OpenPGP_signature
Description: OpenPGP digital signature