While trying to set up some semblance of a proper release cadence, as well as hoping to tag a new NUT release at this or that "pretty date" time and again, something urgent kept popping up to delay the release. Still, looking month-to-month, this release is 2 years after v2.8.0, so we're on track to yearlies. Maybe quarterlies would not be impossible - just gotta manage expectations and the number of planned milestones :)
As a fun fact, some development work for this release was done directly on an Android phone (Termux app sufficiently delivers a native-architectured Debian/Linux environment), and the release is being cut from a storm in the Northern (Icy) Ocean, enchanted by the ethereal shine of the Polar lights... Interesting times, indeed...
The NUT v2.8.2 release ties up more loose ends from earlier development branches and forks, complete with warnings clean-up and Windows portability where possible/easy, bringing in nutconf (a C++ library to interact with NUT configs and more, and the frontend tool for it), an interactive CLI installer contributed from a vendor's bundling of NUT, more features for the nut-driver-enumerator (NDE), several improvements for the nut-scanner, as well as refinement, enhancements and bug-fixing for features (and odd regressions) added in the recent releases.
Some user-reported issues between their devices and such drivers as riello_usb and usbhid-ups subdriver for Belkin/Liebert support, were also added. It is always pleasant to note the collaborations which happen online, with NUT community members addressing many issues by themselves.
Much non-functional activity revolved around CI-related improvements, including migration of the NUT CI farm from Fosshost (RIP) to Digital Ocean, and revised build recipes with improved portability (especially for documentation builds).
As usual, for more details, see the NEWS.adoc and UPGRADING.adoc files, or even peruse the ChangeLog document.
The next treat on the menu in a future release can be the remainder of the 42ity fork, such as DMF technology support - it finally passed the new strict quality gates of NUT CI that appeared for v2.8.0 release and have evolved ever since. This work informed many pointed fixes for the upstream project, which are included in this release.