lightfall-utils

Shared Qt/EPICS infrastructure for ALS control applications (Lightfall, CAtfish).

Extracted from Lightfall. Modules:

• lightfall_utils.threads — managed Qt thread pool, QThreadFuture, main-thread marshalling
• lightfall_utils.logging / log_buffer — loguru configuration, timing, in-process log ring buffer
• lightfall_utils.qt_affinity — GUI-thread assertion helpers (gui_thread_only)
• lightfall_utils.config — priority-layered YAML config with pydantic validation
• lightfall_utils.theming — semantic design tokens, theme registry/manager, QSS generation
• lightfall_utils.ipc — NATS-backed IPCService with a trust handshake, per-session capability channels, discovery and a structured reply protocol; optional LocalNatsServer for broker-less development (pip install lightfall-utils[local-nats]). lightfall_utils.ipc.capability (stdlib only) holds the connection-capability helpers that bcgnats requires of every client: a secret connect token plus a matching _INBOX.<p> inbox prefix (see Lightfall's NATS Use Model developer-guide page and docs/ipc.md).
• lightfall_utils.ca — caproto → Qt signal bridge (SharedContext, PV); requires the ca extra
• lightfall_utils.caproto_shutdown — drains caproto's user-callback thread pools cleanly at application shutdown

Install: pip install lightfall-utils[ca]. Add the multihomed extra alongside ca for caproto multi-homed interface enumeration (pip install lightfall-utils[ca,multihomed]).

Development:

python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate    # Windows (source .venv/bin/activate on Unix)
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest