cycloidgen v7.8.0

Numbers — none move. Nothing here touches the geometry, the analysis or what
an export contains. A design opened in 7.8.0 analyses exactly as it did in
7.7.0; what is new is that the application can now tell you when it is no longer
the version those numbers should be coming from.

Added

• It can say when it is out of date, if you say it may. An engineering tool
  is installed once and used for months, and this one has had no way to mention
  that it had fallen behind. That is not a missing convenience. The models
  change between releases — the changelog above is mostly a record of numbers
  moving — so a design sized against a build from two versions ago can disagree
  with the current one about the same drive, and the person reading the old
  answer has no reason to suspect it. There was nothing in the application that
  could tell them.

  Help ▸ Check for updates… asks GitHub which release is the newest and says
  so either way. Help ▸ Check for updates automatically does the same once a
  day, in the background, and stays quiet unless there is something to say.

  Nothing is sent before you are asked. The first run puts the question up
  once, in plain words, and until it is answered no request is made by any path.
  What a check sends is a request for a version number: nothing about your
  designs, your machine or your files, and there is nothing in the application
  that collects any of that in the first place.

  A "no" is remembered, and there are three different ones. Not now asks again
  tomorrow. Skip this version means that particular release is not wanted and
  nothing more is said about it until a newer one appears — asking from the menu
  overrides it, because that is the user putting the question again. Turning the
  setting off stops it entirely. A prompt that cannot be dismissed for good is a
  prompt people learn to click through, and then the one that matters goes the
  same way.

  The dialog carries the release notes rather than only the version number. "Is
  7.8.1 worth installing in the middle of a job" is a question about what
  changed, and sending the reader to a browser to find out is how it gets
  postponed indefinitely.

• On Windows, it can do the install. Choosing Download and install fetches
  the installer with a progress bar you can cancel, checks it against the length
  GitHub published for it, closes the application and starts it. Windows asks for
  permission first — the installer needs it, and that decision stays with the
  person in front of the machine. Preferences, recent files and the restored
  session survive it; the installer clears the old bundle rather than copying
  over it, which is why the application closes first.

  The build is still unsigned, and the dialog says so rather than implying a
  verification that has not happened. SmartScreen warns exactly as it does for an
  installer fetched in a browser, and the download is checked for being whole,
  not for being ours. A signed build is still planned.

• What it offers depends on how this copy was installed, because offering the
  wrong route is worse than offering none. A pip install is given the upgrade
  command with the interpreter that is actually running named in it — a machine
  with several Pythons is exactly where a bare pip install -U upgrades a copy
  that is not the one in front of you. An AppImage or a disk image is a file you
  put somewhere yourself and is not ours to replace, so those are sent to the
  release page. Only the Windows installer, and only on the architecture the
  release actually carries a bundle for, is offered as an install.

Changed

• certifi is a dependency now. ssl.create_default_context() reads the
  platform certificate store, which is the right answer on Windows and on a
  normal Linux install and the wrong one inside a frozen bundle on macOS: OpenSSL
  looks in the paths it was built against, they belong to the CI runner, and a
  perfectly good connection fails verification. It is imported optionally, so a
  copy installed without it falls back to the platform store rather than
  failing — and nothing anywhere disables verification.

• CYCLOIDGEN_NO_UPDATE_CHECK turns the whole thing off, by every path including
  the menu, which stays visible and greyed out saying why. It exists for the same
  reason CYCLOIDGEN_SETTINGS does: whoever ships a copy may have a better
  answer than we do about how it gets updated, and a distribution whose users
  update through their package manager should not be second-guessed by the
  application.

---

Windows - cycloidgen_..._Setup.exe. It is unsigned, so
SmartScreen will warn on first run: More info -> Run anyway. A
signed build is planned.

Linux - cycloidgen-...-x86_64.AppImage. chmod +x and run it;
it needs glibc 2.35 or newer. If it will not start, the machine has no
FUSE 2: install libfuse2, or run the file with
--appimage-extract-and-run, which unpacks it instead of mounting it.

macOS - cycloidgen-...-arm64.dmg, Apple silicon. Drag it to
Applications, then run this before opening it:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/cycloidgen.app

It is signed ad-hoc but not notarized, so Gatekeeper blocks the first
launch. On macOS 15 and later the dialog it raises defaults to
Move to Trash, which deletes the install - there is no Open
Anyway in that dialog, it appears in System Settings only after a
launch has been blocked, and right-click -> Open no longer bypasses
it. Clearing the flag first avoids the dialog entirely. On an Intel
Mac, use pip.

Anywhere with Python 3.10-3.14: pip install cycloidgen, then
cycloidgen.

The numbers this produces are preliminary sizing estimates, not a
certification. Validate against a physical prototype before anything
load-bearing depends on them.