Add xWeatherRouting 1.17.2 to the Alpha catalogue

[pob220]

Ready for Alpha review — xWeatherRouting 1.17.2

The packages are published and verified. This submission adds seven platform entries for xWeatherRouting 1.17.2.0; all superseded 1.17.1 staging entries have been removed.

• Catalogue targets: Debian 12/13 x86_64, Ubuntu 22.04/24.04 x86_64, Flatpak 25.08 x86_64, Windows x86/wx32, and macOS ARM64.
• All nine build targets succeeded. The complete set of nine archives and nine metadata files is published under Cloudsmith version 1.17.2.0+380.6c4d5b2 in pob220/xweather-routing-alpha-oss.
• All 18 public objects completed processing. Anonymous downloads of every archive matched the original CI SHA256; published metadata matched the final deployment artifacts and passed the catalogue XSD.
• Eight packages retain the successful 6c4d5b2 builds. Ubuntu 22.04 alone was rebuilt at 68e8359 after fixing a Docker dependency-installation timeout. CI verified unchanged runtime sources against 6c4d5b2; the recovered Ubuntu build passed all 222 routing tests. No 1.17.1 binaries are reused.
• Linux/Flatpak ARM64 packages remain available for direct testing only, pending physical-device validation, and are not included in this catalogue submission.
• This adds the separate xWeatherRouting identity. Standard Weather Routing and xGRIB catalogue entries are unchanged, as are xGRIB's publishing setup and credentials.

Successful build, verification and approved deployment: https://app.circleci.com/workflow/963014b0-1541-4f12-97ae-1456b53ec79a

Retained source baseline: pob220/xweather_routing_pi@6c4d5b2

Ubuntu CI-only recovery: pob220/xweather_routing_pi@68e8359

Per-file CI provenance: https://output.circle-artifacts.com/output/job/9fde4045-b639-45e8-beea-677070d36f24/artifacts/0/alpha-publication/source-provenance.json

Public packages: https://cloudsmith.io/~pob220/repos/xweather-routing-alpha-oss/

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xWeatherRouting — help shape the next generation of Weather Routing

xWeatherRouting is an upgraded development version of OpenCPN’s established Weather Routing plugin, building on the work of its original authors and contributors. This separately named Alpha lets you test the improvements and provide feedback while the standard plugin remains available.

Most improvements work with stock OpenCPN, without a specially patched installation:

• A modernised routing engine — adaptive route searching and additional recovery strategies designed to tackle difficult passages and coastal approaches.
• Departure-time optimisation — compare departure options using parallel calculations to help identify a suitable sailing window.
• Planned-arrival routing — specify when you want to arrive and calculate the required departure time.
• Clearer time handling — consistent UTC calculations with optional local-time display.
• Additional route validation and reliability fixes, including the route-table lifetime fix in 1.17.1 and Climatology wind-atlas initialisation and longitude-difference fixes in 1.17.2.
• Optional chart-aware and depth-aware routing — enhanced checks using chart information, including supported o-charts through modified components. These features require the specially patched OpenCPN host - they are not available on stock OpenCPN, which retains the standard land checks. Future OpenCPN API updates may support this feature.

Our intention is for these improvements eventually to become the next standard Weather Routing release, once sufficient Alpha testing and maintainer review support that transition. For now, xWeatherRouting provides an independent way to try them and help refine them.

Before testing: back up your routing configuration, boats and polars, and disable standard Weather Routing before enabling xWeatherRouting. The two variants currently share settings and routing data; the separate name does not provide an isolated profile.

Please report both successes and reproducible failures. For problems, include your OpenCPN and plugin versions, route configuration, boat/polar files, GRIB and relevant logs.

This is experimental passage-planning software. Independently check every proposed route against charts, forecasts and navigational conditions.