The interface is hand-written GtkBuilder XML and nothing in the build can see a mistake in it: a
property a class does not have, or a child a container does not accept, is a Gtk-ERROR when the
window is built -- and Gtk-ERROR aborts the process, so a typo in a .ui takes the application down
rather than failing to open a dialog. xml-stripblanks catches malformed XML and nothing else, and
the probes catch the rest only for the windows they open. Three of those aborts happened during
this refactor.
tools/check_ui.py round-trips each file through blueprint-compiler: decompile to blueprint, then
compile that, which type-checks every property and child type against the GIR. The XML stays the
source of truth and stays hand-written -- this is a check, not a compiler, and nothing here is
needed to build the application. Which is why the target is opt-in (no ALL) and the tool is looked
for at configure time rather than required: without it the target is absent, not silently passing.
$ make -C build test-ui
check_ui: 5 files in src/ui
ok help.ui ... source-form.ui
check_ui: 5 ok, 0 failed
Injected the exact mistake that cost a run earlier (an AdwEntryRow subtitle) and the check caught
it, with the caret and the "did you mean title?" hint, exiting non-zero. --lint prints the linter's
advice separately: it is advice, and the linter has opinions this project does not share.
src/ui/main-window.ui holds the window, its two panes, the plot column with the status line under it,
and the sidebar's scroller. What stays in code is what depends on the stream: the events pane, the two
plot areas, the sidebar's panels and the status popover, each put into a slot by id.
The header bar is deliberately not in the file. It is the window's own titlebar, every button on it is
wired to an action, and an AdwApplicationWindow refuses a titlebar outright -- a fatal Adwaita-ERROR
rather than a warning that leaves the window merely ugly -- so the window is a GtkApplicationWindow and
the header bar stays where it was.
gtk_paned_set_position() is the other thing that had to stay in code, and the reason is order rather
than shape: it clamps against its children *now*, so stating it before the sidebar's panels exist moved
the plot column by ~180 px.
The layout, events and box-zoom probes read what they read before this change, and the header reads
window_button_w=130 bar_w=756 as it always has -- checked by building the previous commit and running
the same probe against it, because the layout numbers in the notes turned out to be stale from an
earlier session. Five UI files now.
src/ui/source-form.ui is the form a source is added or edited with: an AdwDialog of
AdwPreferencesGroup rows (AdwEntryRow, AdwSpinRow, AdwSwitchRow) with its action in the header bar,
where the label says which mode the form is in -- Connect for a new host, Save for an existing
configuration. The grid of labels and bare entries it replaces had its hints in placeholders, which
vanish as soon as there is a value; they are the groups' descriptions now.
src/ui/help.ui is the help window's chrome: an AdwWindow with a header bar and an
AdwNavigationSplitView whose sidebar is the page list. The rows stay in C++ because the fourteen
pages are data, not template.
Four UI files now, 653 lines of template that used to be widget construction. Two libadwaita traps
cost a run each and are in docs/claude/invariants-gtk-and-chrome.md: an AdwDialog has no content
property (its child is a plain <child>, unlike an AdwToolbarView), and AdwEntryRow has no subtitle
(it is an AdwPreferencesRow, not an AdwActionRow). The unused form_field() helper went with them.
Every probe reading is unchanged -- [sources] form:, [sources] edit form:, [help] -- which is what
refactoring a shape rather than a behaviour should look like.
src/ui/preferences.ui is an AdwPreferencesDialog whose rows are libadwaita's own -- AdwEntryRow,
AdwSpinRow, AdwSwitchRow, AdwComboRow, AdwButtonRow -- instead of a label and a bare GtkEntry in a
GtkBox. There is no Apply button: a row applies as it changes, which is what those widgets are
designed around, and [prefs-probe] reads the settings file back after every change.
The folder chooser is cancellable now, so a picker still open when the dialog closes cannot write
into a row that is gone; the cancellable is also how the probe takes the cancel path without a
mouse.
Two traps cost a run each and are recorded in docs/claude/invariants-gtk-and-chrome.md: an
AdwDialog is not a GtkWindow (it cannot parent a GtkFileDialog, and in floating mode it adds a
native surface to gtk_window_get_toplevels() that is neither a widget nor a window), and a .ui
that is not listed in the GResource is a Gtk-ERROR at runtime rather than a build failure -- which
is exactly what the probe opening every window is for.
GTK4 and libadwaita. It receives one UDP stream through the vendored
udpsclient, buffers it in a large ring, and draws it with the vendored
plotter: a trigger with a pre/post event window, a pause that freezes the
window, cursors, measurements, math channels in a node editor, an event cache,
named configurations, preferences, and an export of the visible window to
.npy/.csv. Waveform files can be opened and analysed in place.
The interface is two threads -- a producer that owns the socket and the GTK
main thread that owns every widget and the GL context -- sharing one model
under one mutex, with samples crossing through lock-free rings.
deps/plotter is a submodule pinned to the commit this tree builds against;
deps/udpsclient is vendored in place. docs/claude/ documents the rules that
cost a defect to learn, and SPECS.md is the requirement document.
The file was 1967 lines and is auto-loaded into every context, so every
session paid for the whole of it to reach one invariant. It now carries the
project's goal, the three facts that are always relevant, and a table of
contents; the body is fourteen files under docs/claude/ reached by link
rather than by import, so nothing is loaded until it is asked for.
The content is moved verbatim -- the only edits are each file's own header
and the cross-references that became cross-file ("see the invariant below"
is now a link to the file that owns it).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Martino Ferrari