Version 2.18.2

This is a minor maintenance release. Important changes include

• Improved handling of user parameter files, making upgrades more robust when task parameter definitions have changed.

• irafcl can now execute individual IRAF commands directly from the command line, making it easier to use IRAF tasks from shell scripts.

• Incorporated a number of bug fixes and improvements from NOIRLab's IRAF maintenance and Gemini testing, including improved handling of FITS binary tables in TBTABLES, fixes to PLIO mask handling affecting tasks such as imedit, and the GHOST2MS task for converting DRAGONS-reduced GHOST data to IRAF-compatible multispec format.

• Various portability, build, and code maintenance improvements.

What's Changed

• Bump actions/checkout from 4 to 5 in /.github/workflows by @dependabot[bot] in #444
• Update Github CIs macintel platform to macos15 Sequoia by @olebole in #445
• NOIRLAB: Add GHOST2MS task to the PROTO package by @olebole in #448
• Fix argument type of a_off in CHRPAK by @olebole in #457
• NOIRLAB: TBTABLES bugfixes found in Gemini testing when using FITS Binary Tables by @olebole in #450
• NOIRLAB: Fix invalid use of errstr by @olebole in #456
• NOIRLAB: Bug fixes to PLIO mask handling causing errors in IMEDIT by @olebole in #455
• Bump actions/checkout from 5 to 6 in /.github/workflows by @dependabot[bot] in #460
• Remove duplicate main.x file by @olebole in #462
• Allow irafcl/ecl/cl shell script to execute a single command line by @olebole in #461
• NOIRLAB: Add a new 16K frame buffer by @olebole in #452
• Changes in unix/os/zfiotx (inspired by NOIRLAB) by @olebole in #454
• Remove helpdbfrom sources by @olebole in #463
• Use ssh by default to call remote kernel (with contributions from NOIRLAB) by @olebole in #453
• NOIRLAB: minor bugfixes and cleanups by @olebole in #459
• Unconditionally merge user and package parfiles by @olebole in #466
• Bump actions/checkout from 6 to 7 in /.github/workflows by @dependabot[bot] in #473
• Obey $TMPDIR in f77.sh by @olebole in #471
• Replace remaining index() with strchr() in mkpkg by @olebole in #470
• NOIRLAB: minor bugfix in proto package by @olebole in #468
• Prepare version 2.18.2 by @olebole in #474
• Fix file permissions and encoding by @olebole in #475
• Recursively remove empty directories with rmfiles -p option by @olebole in #476

Full Changelog: v2.18.1...v2.18.2