Red Hat (RHT) has rolled out the latest version of software tools to assist open source developers and administrators. Designed to complement the company’s flagship product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), the tools include the newest stable releases of many popular open source software packages.

Specifically, the company has released both Red Hat Developer Toolset 3.1 and Red Hat Software Collections Beta 2, updating the previously available versions of both software suites. The revision comes just short of a year since the release of RHEL 7, the current version of the company’s open source server and cloud platform.

RHEL is released on a separate cycle from the company’s developer and software collection tools.

The developer tools, which are available to subscribers of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Program, includes major open source software for writing and compiling code, such as Eclipse and the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). The Software Collections beta package offers stable versions of popular open source programming languages and database platforms including PHP, Perl, Ruby and MongoDB.

For the most part, the updates to both software suites involve bringing their constituent tools up to date by offering the latest stable versions of the software that are available from the projects developing them. At the same time, the Software Collections package includes enhancements to older versions of many popular programming languages, which Red Hat continues to support actively to appeal to developers who need to work with legacy versions of these languages instead of the most recent releases—a move of no little importance, given the struggle many programmers and admins face to ensure backwards compatibility while also taking advantage of the latest technology.