0.4.6 — Screen Groups, Partial Installs & Missing-Screen Banner

0.4.6 — Screen Groups, Partial Installs & Missing-Screen Banner#

Released — current version

0.4.6 folds in every feature that was drafted for 0.4.5 (License/EULA page, \r quiet progress, metadata.installer_icon) together with the new 0.4.6 scope below. There is no standalone 0.4.5 release on PyPI.

Screen Groups#

Screens can be bundled under a group label in the installer.

  • New release_info.groups block in project.json:

    "release_info": {
    "groups": {
        "Core": {
            "description": "Main screens",
            "screens": {
                "ScreenA": {"default": true},
                "ScreenB": {"default": true},
                "ScreenC": {"default": false}
            }
        }
    }
}

  • Each member screen has a default flag controlling whether it starts checked when the group is rendered in the installer GUI.

  • A screen belongs to at most one group; ungrouped screens continue to appear as individual checkboxes.

  • Groups with no standalone member present in the archive are hidden from the GUI (tabbed screens ship with the Host and cannot be independently toggled).

Installer GUI#

  • Group rows render as checkbox + expand arrow. Clicking the arrow reveals indented per-screen sub-checkboxes; clicking the group master toggles every child on or off regardless of default (defaults only set the initial state).

  • Tri-state indicator (alternate) shown when a group has a mix of checked and unchecked children; same for the top-level “All” checkbox.

  • Per-screen version labels continue to appear next to each child.

Per-Screen Dependencies#

New schema keys on Screens.<name>:

  • requires: [other_screen_name, ...] — hard dependency.

  • suggests: [other_screen_name, ...] — soft recommendation.

  • warn_message: str — custom message shown alongside the unmet dependencies and by the runtime banner when this screen is missing.

On Next click the installer cross-checks every selected screen against its requires/suggests. When a required screen is unmet, the user gets a 3-button dialog:

  • Yes — auto-select the missing required screens and continue.

  • No — continue without them (not recommended).

  • Cancel — stay on the installables page.

Partial Installs (--Groups / --Screens on vis release)#

Developers can build an installer that contains only a subset of screens.

vis release -Groups Core
vis release -Screens WorderEditor,FloorView
vis release -Groups Core -Screens DashboardA

  • The effective screen set is the union of the screens listed under each named group plus any explicitly named screens. The Host itself is always included.

  • Excluded screens are never compiled; their binaries, .pyd files and per-screen entries in project.json are pruned from binaries.zip.

  • Empty groups are dropped from the archived project.json.

Quiet-Mode Group Expansion#

installer.exe --Quiet <name> [<name>...] now accepts group names.

  • Group names expand to the group’s default-selected member screens.

  • When a group contains tabbed screens, the Host is implicitly added to the install set (tabbed screens ride inside the Host exe).

  • Unknown tokens still produce the existing “no archive entry matches” warning.

install_log.json#

Each record in the screens array now includes a group field (the group name or null). The uninstaller, the missing-screen detector and external tooling can use it to reason about installed bundles.

Runtime Missing-Screen Banner#

When the end-user clicks a navigation button that points at a screen whose binary was never installed, Host.open() now shows an inline warning in the active window’s InfoRow instead of silently doing nothing.

  • New helper VIStk.Structures.is_screen_installed(name) — reads .VIS/install_log.json first, falls back to a filesystem check (.Runtime/<name>.exe or Screens/<name>.pyd). Always returns True in dev mode (sys.frozen is falsy).

  • New InfoRow.show_banner(text, duration_ms=5000, level="warn") — overlays a colour-coded message across the status bar with a ✕ dismiss button and an auto-dismiss timer.

  • Uses the screen’s warn_message when one is defined, otherwise a generic “X is not installed. Reinstall and select it to enable this feature.” fallback.

New CLI: vis group#

vis group add <name> [description]
vis group remove <name>
vis group assign <screen> <group> [true|false]
vis group unassign <screen>
vis group default <screen> <true|false>
vis group list

All five mutators persist to .VIS/project.json. vis edit also accepts requires, suggests and warn_message as per-screen attributes (list values are passed as a comma-separated string).

Absorbed from 0.4.5#

The following were drafted for 0.4.5 and are released as part of 0.4.6:

  • License / EULA page in the installer.

  • \r carriage-return progress in --Quiet mode.

  • metadata.installer_icon per-project override for the installer exe icon.