Feature/experimental features

[wakonig]

Description

This PR adds the ability to enable certain elements through a qt settings flag called "experimental features". This should allow us to gain feedback from users by giving them early access to features without officially committing to the exact interface.

A first use case is the developer view which works but could benefit from user feedback.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 82.60870% with 4 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
bec_widgets/applications/main_app.py	40.00%	2 Missing and 1 partial ⚠️
...gets/widgets/containers/main_window/main_window.py	91.66%	0 Missing and 1 partial ⚠️

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[github-actions]

Benchmark comparison

Threshold: 20% (lower is better).
Result: 0 regression(s), 0 improvement(s) beyond threshold.

No benchmark regression exceeded the configured threshold.

No benchmark improvement exceeded the configured threshold.

All benchmark results

Benchmark	Baseline	Current	Change	Status
BEC IPython client with companion app	2.12913 s	2.2167 s	+4.11%	ok
BEC IPython client without companion app	2.12382 s	2.21611 s	+4.35%	ok
Import bec_widgets	0.0136231 s	0.0136459 s	+0.17%	ok
tests/unit_tests/benchmarks/test_dock_area_benchmark.py::test_add_waveform_to_dock_area	0.15252 s	0.1513 s	-0.80%	ok

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Adds a global “experimental features” flag (persisted via QSettings) and wires it into the UI so experimental-only elements (initially the Developer/IDE view) can be exposed to users behind a restart-gated toggle.

Changes:

• Persist a global experimental-features boolean in the profile metadata (_meta.ini) via profile_utils.
• Add a checkable “Enable Experimental Features” menu action that persists the flag and prompts for restart.
• Conditionally register DeveloperView in BECMainApp only when the flag is enabled; add unit tests for default/flag persistence.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 6 out of 6 changed files in this pull request and generated 5 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
tests/unit_tests/test_main_widnow.py	Adds a test ensuring the menu action persists the experimental flag and requests restart.
tests/unit_tests/test_main_app.py	Adds a test ensuring the developer view is not present when experimental features are disabled.
tests/unit_tests/test_dock_area.py	Adds a persistence test for the global experimental-features flag.
bec_widgets/widgets/containers/main_window/main_window.py	Adds the “Enable Experimental Features” QAction and restart prompt handling.
bec_widgets/widgets/containers/dock_area/profile_utils.py	Adds settings key + getter/setter for the global experimental-features flag.
bec_widgets/applications/main_app.py	Gates DeveloperView registration behind the experimental-features flag.

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[d-perl]

this is great, I think it will be very useful and help to get stuff out the door and iterate faster