Persist dock layout to profiles; dedupe port names; Channels-tab Create button

- Fix duplicated device names ("FT231X USB UART - FT231X USB UART (...)")
  — pyserial on Linux often reports the same udev model string twice for
  cheap FTDI/CH340-style adapters. Collapse it at the list_ports() source
  so every consumer (device auto-name, port picker) benefits.

- Save Control Panel / Namespace dock area, floating geometry, visibility,
  size and order to .labui profiles via QMainWindow.saveState()/
  restoreState(), round-tripped through the existing Profile.settings
  passthrough (self._settings) — no profile schema change needed.

- Channels tab: replace the per-row Signal ⊕ button (and its pinned/
  frozen-column overlay) with a single "Create Channel" button below the
  Namespace panel. Select one or more Signal/Channel rows (multi-select
  now supported) and click it — selected rows become the new Channel's
  sources, or an empty Channel is created if nothing's selected. Fixes a
  bug in the process: the multi/zero-source path defaulted to
  kind="expression" with no expression text, which fails to compile and
  silently dropped the channel; use kind="none" instead, which the user
  then edits in the Channels pane.

  NamespacePanel itself (ui/namespace_panel.py) goes back to a plain
  read-only reference widget — the create-channel button and its logic
  live entirely in ConfigWindow (config_window.py), so the shared
  dockable Namespace panel on the main window is unaffected.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

1 files changed, 35 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/ui/main_window.py b/ui/main_window.py
index ba93121..6dae1be 100644
--- a/ui/main_window.py
+++ b/ui/main_window.py
@@ -12,9 +12,10 @@ from PyQt6.QtWidgets import (
     QToolBar, QSizePolicy, QApplication, QFrame,
     QAbstractSpinBox, QComboBox, QMenu,
 )
-from PyQt6.QtCore import Qt, QTimer, QObject, QEvent, QRect, pyqtSignal, pyqtSlot
+from PyQt6.QtCore import Qt, QTimer, QObject, QEvent, QRect, QByteArray, pyqtSignal, pyqtSlot
 from PyQt6.QtGui import QPainter, QColor, QFont, QAction
 import logging
+import base64
 import os
 
 
@@ -116,6 +117,12 @@ _LIGHT_QSS = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)), "style_lig
 
 
 class MainWindow(QMainWindow):
+    # Bump when dock/toolbar structure changes in a way that would make an
+    # old saved dock_state blob meaningless (e.g. a dock renamed/removed) —
+    # restoreState() rejects a mismatched version and just no-ops instead
+    # of applying garbage.
+    _DOCK_STATE_VERSION = 1
+
     def __init__(self):
         super().__init__()
         self.setWindowTitle("LabUI")
@@ -622,6 +629,7 @@ class MainWindow(QMainWindow):
 
     def _profile_capture(self, name: str = "Profile") -> Profile:
         """Serialise current state into a Profile object."""
+        self._capture_dock_state()
         return ProfileManager.capture(
             registry=self.registry,
             processor=self.processor,
@@ -702,6 +710,7 @@ class MainWindow(QMainWindow):
             self._win_config.refresh_devices()
             self._win_config.refresh_derived()
             self._win_config.refresh_plot(self._chart._cfg)
+        QTimer.singleShot(0, self._apply_dock_state)
         self._status.setText(f"Profile loaded: {profile.name}")
 
     # ── Device / signal events ────────────────────────────────────────────
@@ -819,6 +828,31 @@ class MainWindow(QMainWindow):
         self._apply_theme(self._settings.get("theme", "dark"))
         self.engine._interval = self._settings.get("poll_ms", 100) / 1000.0
         self._apply_developer_mode(self._settings.get("developer_mode", False))
+        QTimer.singleShot(0, self._apply_dock_state)
+
+    def _capture_dock_state(self):
+        """Snapshot Control Panel / Namespace dock area, floating geometry,
+        visibility, size and order via Qt's own QMainWindow.saveState() —
+        one call covers everything a QDockWidget can have moved, instead of
+        hand-tracking each attribute. Stored as base64 in self._settings,
+        which both app_settings.json (save_settings()) and .labui profiles
+        (Profile.settings — see ProfileManager.capture()) already round-trip
+        verbatim, so this needs no schema changes on either side, just
+        needs to run before whichever save happens."""
+        raw = bytes(self.saveState(self._DOCK_STATE_VERSION))
+        self._settings["dock_state"] = base64.b64encode(raw).decode("ascii")
+
+    def _apply_dock_state(self):
+        """Restore saved dock state — deferred one event-loop tick (via
+        QTimer.singleShot(0, ...) at call sites) since restoreState() before
+        the main window's initial layout has settled doesn't stick, the
+        same reason splitter sizing elsewhere in this codebase (e.g.
+        plot_window.py's _init_split) defers similarly."""
+        encoded = self._settings.get("dock_state")
+        if not encoded:
+            return
+        raw = QByteArray(base64.b64decode(encoded))
+        self.restoreState(raw, self._DOCK_STATE_VERSION)
 
     def _apply_developer_mode(self, enabled: bool):
         level = logging.DEBUG if enabled else logging.WARNING