NightScribe 0.1.2

Fixes the one thing that could take a working EXOTIC environment away, and stops
the app from claiming there is no Python when there is.

Fixed

• "Prepare environment" can no longer destroy the environment you already had.
  It used to wipe the target folder before building, so any failure after that
  (no network, no disk space, a cancel) left nothing behind; and one case did it
  every single time: the app offers the environment it already built as the base
  interpreter, the wipe took that interpreter away halfway through the build, and
  the next command could not even run. It now builds in a sibling folder and swaps
  it in only once the new environment works, so a failed rebuild is harmless.
• A base interpreter that lives inside the environment folder is refused, with
  the reason written out, instead of being deleted mid-build.
• The app no longer says "no Python found" when the configured interpreter is
  gone. That message, on a machine with a perfectly good Python installed, is
  what made a deleted environment look like a lost configuration. It now tells the
  two cases apart ("the interpreter you pointed at is not there any more" and "it
  is not one EXOTIC can use") and goes looking for another interpreter on its own.
• The outcome of "Prepare environment" always reaches the log, so a failure leaves
  a trace instead of a silence.

Added

• The EXOTIC environment is published ready to unzip. It is now built and
  published by the project, in its own release (tag exotic-env), as one zip per
  platform with a portable CPython 3.11 and EXOTIC 4.3.1 already installed inside:
  unzip it anywhere and point Settings at the interpreter it carries. Nothing to
  install, no Python to hunt for. The versions inside are pinned in a lock file
  committed in the repository, so the same zip is always the same stack, and the
  release is only rebuilt when that lock changes.

Changed

• EXOTIC accepts Python 3.10 to 3.12, not only 3.10 and older. 3.10 reached end
  of life in October 2026, and refusing 3.11 and 3.12 forced people to hunt for an
  interpreter the app could already have used. 3.11 is verified end to end: a full
  pip install exotic on 3.11.2 leaves EXOTIC 4.3.1 importable with every version
  it pins (numpy 1.26.4, astropy 6.1.7, numba 0.59.1). 3.13 stays out, because
  numpy 1.26 has no wheels for it.

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Downloads

• NightScribeSetup-0.1.2.exe: Windows installer (per-user, no admin rights needed).
• NightScribe-0.1.2-windows-x64.zip: Windows portable build; unzip and run nightscribe.exe gui.
• nightscribe_0.1.2_amd64.deb: Debian 13+ / Ubuntu 25.10+ (system Python; includes Find_Orb).
• nightscribe-*.x86_64.rpm: Fedora 42+ / openSUSE Tumbleweed (system Python; includes Find_Orb).

Windows can stop the installer in two different ways, and only one has a way through. SmartScreen shows Windows protected your PC and offers More info -> Run anyway. Smart App Control (Windows 11, on by default on new installations) blocks unsigned code outright, with no such option: either turn it off under Windows Security > App & browser control > Smart App Control, or run NightScribe on another machine. The binaries are unsigned because NightScribe is free software and has no code signing certificate; the details are in docs/user/01-getting-started. Other distros (Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, ...) install manually: see docs/ASTROMETRY.

On Linux, installing the .deb from your Downloads folder can print an apt note about the sandbox user (permission denied, read as root instead): it is harmless and the install finishes.

The NINA/PINS integration is in test: it is there to be tried and to report what is missing, and the rest is planned for 0.2. CCDciel is the complete observatory backend today.

Report issues at https://github.com/irydeo/nightscribe/issues