# PrusaSlicer Profiles Module

This module handles the parsing, management, and evaluation of PrusaSlicer configuration profiles (`.ini` files). It supports profile inheritance, compatibility evaluation using PrusaSlicer's expression language, and generating merged configurations for slicing.

## Project Structure

- **`__init__.py`**: Exports the primary API (`LocalCache`, `Profile`, `ConfigWriter`).
- **`cache.py`**: Contains the `LocalCache` class for managing profile loading and metadata.
- **`models.py`**: Defines core data models like `Profile` (as a dataclass) and `ConfigWriter`.
- **`parser.py`**: Implements a recursive descent parser for PrusaSlicer's expression language.
- **`fields.py`**: Robustly loads and searches PrusaSlicer setting metadata (JSON/CSV).
- **`utils.py`**: Contains canonical implementations of INI parsing and configuration merging (`generate_conf`).

## Core Components

### 1. `LocalCache` (`cache.py`)
- Manages a collection of profiles loaded from disk.
- Scans directories for `.ini` files and tracks changes using file metadata.
- Categorizes profiles into `printer`, `print`, and `filament`.
- `evaluate_compatibility`: Checks which filament and print profiles are compatible with specific printer profiles.
- `generate_conf_writer`: Creates a `ConfigWriter` by merging a printer, print, and one or more filament profiles.

### 2. `Profile` (`models.py`)
- Represents a single PrusaSlicer profile (Printer, Filament, or Print).
- Stores configuration as a dictionary (`conf_dict`).
- Handles inheritance logic via `generate_inherited_confs`.
- Supports compatibility checks via `evaluate_compatibility`.

### 3. `ConfigWriter` (`models.py`)
- Helper to write merged configurations to a file (e.g., for passing to a slicer or embedding in a 3MF).
- Includes checksum generation for configuration integrity.

### 4. `Parser` (`parser.py`)
- Tokenizes and parses expression strings into an AST that can be evaluated against a configuration dictionary.
- Supports variables, indexing, logical operators, and regex matching.

### 5. `fields.py`
- Loads metadata about PrusaSlicer configuration fields from `prusaslicer_fields.json` and `prusaslicer_modifier_fields.csv`.
- Uses robust path resolution relative to the module's directory.

## Typical Workflow
1. Initialize `LocalCache`.
2. Call `cache.load([paths_to_profiles])`.
3. Select a printer, print, and filament profile(s).
4. (Optional) Evaluate compatibility using `cache.evaluate_compatibility`.
5. Generate a merged config using `cache.generate_conf_writer`.
6. Use `ConfigWriter` to output the final configuration for slicing.