Changes in version 2.0.0 (2026-08-04)                  

Package reinstatement

  - This release reinstates KernelICA on CRAN after the package was
    previously archived.
  - The issues that led to the archival have been resolved, and the
    package has been updated to comply with current CRAN policies and
    checks.
  - Package maintenance has been transferred to a new maintainer.
  - Updated package metadata to reflect the current authorship and
    maintainer information.

Bug fixes

  - Fixed an argument-order bug in the Hermite kernel implementation
    affecting kernel_matrix(..., kernel = "hermite") and
    incomplete_cholesky(..., kernel = "hermite").
  - Fixed validation of user-supplied initialization matrices in
    kernel_ica().
  - Fixed selection of the best solution across multiple random starts
    in kernel_ica().
  - Improved handling of empty vectors and zero-length loops in several
    functions by replacing 1:n and 1:length(x) with seq_len() and
    seq_along().
  - Added a guard in MD_distant_matrices() for cases where no additional
    matrices need to be generated.
  - incomplete_cholesky() now accepts integer input consistently by
    coercing input to numeric.
  - kernel_matrix() now validates the kernel argument using match.arg().
  - Corrected the sign in the exponent of the Gaussian kernel.

Build system

  - Modernized the C++ implementation by replacing manual memory
    management with std::unique_ptr.
  - Added missing standard library includes required by current
    compilers.
  - Added -DNDEBUG to release compilation flags.
  - Explicitly specified the package name when loading Rcpp modules.

Documentation

  - Updated package documentation to derive author and maintainer
    information directly from DESCRIPTION.
  - Removed redundant author annotations from individual help pages.
  - Corrected the citation year for the kernel ICA reference.
  - Fixed several typographical errors in the documentation.