v0.2.0rc1: Release Candidate 1

Release Candidate 1 for v0.2.0

This release candidate verifies dynamic versioning, native Windows MSVC wheels, CMake FetchContent decoupling, and automated PyPI pre-release publishing.

Highlights & Breaking Changes

• Native Windows MSVC Support: Compiles natively under MSVC on Windows and publishes precompiled win_amd64 wheels to PyPI (#21, #48, #50).
• Dependency Decoupling with FetchContent: CMake automatically fetches Armadillo when missing from the system (#22, #43).
• Resource-Efficient CI Pipeline: Introduces job-level path filtering, compiler caching (ccache), and tiered PR smoke tests to cut compute time (#42).
• Release Automation & Integrity Gates: Enforces dynamic Git tag versioning, PR milestone verification, documentation link checking, and changelog release gates (#51).
• Breaking Change (Python 3.8): Dropped Python 3.8 support to align with cibuildwheel v4 and active scientific Python baselines (#40).

🚀 Features & Enhancements

• feat(ci,cmake): implement native Windows support and Python wheels (#21) by @pauldruce in #48
• feat(cmake,ci): decouple dependencies using FetchContent and unify CI workflows (#22) by @pauldruce in #43
• feat(ci,release): dynamic versioning, changelog automation, and release integrity gates by @pauldruce in #51
• feat(packaging): dynamic PEP 440 pre-release versioning for PyPI release candidates by @pauldruce in #41

🐛 Bug Fixes

• fix(ci,windows): install lapack in vcpkg and isolate armadillo cache keys by @pauldruce in #50
• fix(ci,cmake): support legacy dependencies under CMake 4.x and declutter step summary by @pauldruce in #44
• fix(ci): bump actions to Node 24 runtimes to eliminate deprecation warnings by @pauldruce in #45

🧰 Build & CI/CD Architecture

• fix(ci,release): improve changelog PR detection and self-reference release PRs by @pauldruce in #53
• chore(release): prepare v0.2.0 release and CHANGELOG.md by @pauldruce in #52
• ci(deps): bump the github-actions group with 7 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #37

📚 Documentation & Governance

• docs(eps): add EP-3 for resource-efficient CI/CD pipeline & modern build architecture by @pauldruce in #42
• docs: post-v0.1.0 release updates, README overhaul, and PyPI metadata by @pauldruce in #39

Full Changelog: v0.1.0...v0.2.0rc1