NEWS

gdalraster.windows 0.2.1

install_gdalraster() now passes repos = NULL to utils::install.packages() when installing from a local source tarball. Previously, repos was set to the active CRAN mirror, which caused R to treat the tarball path as a package name to look up remotely rather than a local file to install. The symptom was a silent no-op accompanied by the warning "package '…tar.gz' is not available for this version of R", followed by the error "gdalraster source install did not produce an installed package" (#11).
When upgrade = TRUE, R package dependencies are now installed via a separate install.packages("gdalraster", repos = repos) call before the source build, so CRAN-resolution still works for the upgrade case while the tarball install itself always uses repos = NULL.

Technical documentation promoted to published vignettes: vignette("architecture") (toolchain, ABI, DLL loading, embedded python, bundle reproduction) and vignette("troubleshooting") (triage flow and symptom matrix). These are now the canonical docs; dev/docs/ is explicitly non-normative maintainer notes.

tools/build_gdal.sh discovers the produced libgdal-*.dll by glob in its final verification instead of hardcoding the SONAME, and fails loudly when no DLL is produced (#2).
install_gdal_runtime() now emits actionable guidance on download failure: the releases URL and the local_zip offline install path (#5).

GDAL runtime baseline bumped to 3.13.1 (upstream release 2026-06-05); default gdal_version in the build workflow updated accordingly.

The GDAL runtime bundle now ships GDAL's pure-python osgeo_utils package (gdal-utils) under <gdal_home>/python, version-locked to the built GDAL tag. activate_gdal_runtime() prepends this directory to PYTHONPATH (session-scoped) so GDAL algorithms that embed a Python interpreter at runtime (e.g. gdal driver gpkg validate) can import it.
activate_gdal_runtime() now returns gdal_python in its invisible result alongside the other configured paths.

New README technical section on the embedded CPython layer and why the compiled osgeo SWIG bindings are intentionally not bundled.
Offline / air-gapped installation documented in the README, vignette, and install_gdal_runtime() help (local_zip workflow).
Troubleshooting guide gains a triage entry for ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'osgeo_utils'.
Maintainer docs aligned with the current bundle contract (bin, include, lib, share, python).

CI is now scoped to its single responsibility: build, verify, and publish the GDAL runtime bundle. The gdalraster source-build verification job was removed; building gdalraster against the bundle is package functionality (install_gdalraster()).
Every CI run now produces durable output: a 30-day workflow artifact and the distributable zip are always created; release publication is gated on tag pushes or the publish_release dispatch input (default true).
Bundle verification asserts the full runtime contract, including python/osgeo_utils.

Initial development version: GDAL runtime bundle install/activation helpers, gdalraster source-build integration, startup hooks, and the Windows CI build pipeline.