homeassistant_espscreen/docs/PROFILES.md

One screen, three files: the shared core and the board files

Since app 0.2.84 a screen's ESPHome configuration is one shared file plus one file per board, put together by ESPHome's own packages mechanism. Before, each board was a 5,000-line profile of which 87 % was the same text as the other board's; every change had to be made twice and the two had already drifted apart in small ways.

File	What it holds
packages/core.yaml	Everything every board shares: the LVGL tree (tiles, cards, overlays, the touch test page), the scripts, the API actions, the entities, the fonts, the globals, and Wi-Fi that never dozes (power_save_mode: none, firmware 0.2.74+; the network itself stays in the screen's own YAML). It contains no number that depends on the board: every such value is a ${NAME} the board file defines.
packages/boards/cyd-2432s028.yaml	The CYD: its hardware (ILI9341 over SPI, XPT2046 resistive touch, backlight, LED), its sizes and font sizes, the code the shared lambdas take from it (the hooks, below), and what only a CYD has: the calibration wizard, a page swipe by LVGL's gesture, ui_self_test, the two scripts that drive the backlight as a light action, its climate card layout.
packages/boards/guition-4848s040.yaml	The Guition: its hardware (ST7701S RGB, GT911, PSRAM), its sizes, its hooks, and what only a Guition has: camera images (online_image, the alert's picture frame), the Rotation entity, the page swipe from the glass edge, the snapshot diagnostics, the climate card with its fan and swing card, the wider tile labels (!extend on each tile).
packages/cyd.yaml, packages/guition.yaml	What a screen installed from ESP Screens builds from over GitHub, unchanged in name and place: ESP Screen Manager writes every screen's YAML with files: [packages/<board>.yaml]. Each is a few lines: where the fonts are, the components from GitHub, and packages: {core: !include core.yaml, board: !include boards/<board>.yaml}.
home-like-2432s028.yaml, guition-4848s040.yaml	The same two files for a build from a checkout (the bench, the manual route of README_EXTENDED.md): the components of the checkout, the fonts from fonts/, and the secrets from secrets.yaml.

ESPHome merges them in this order: the core, then the board file on top of it, then the entry file on top of both. A mapping merges key by key, a list of components with ids merges by id (!extend adds to an existing widget or script, !remove takes one away), any other list is the core's items followed by the board's, and a plain value of the board file replaces the core's. esphome config home-like-2432s028.yaml shows the result.

The three ways a board differs from the core

1. A size, a font size, a name. ${TILE_ICON_SIZE}, ${FONT_HEADLINE_SIZE}, ${TOUCH_TEST_TITLE}: the core writes the placeholder, the board file's substitutions: table gives the value. tools/check_packages.py fails when a board leaves one out, so a new board cannot forget a size.
2. A stretch of C++ inside a shared lambda. The Guition sets runtime_tiles::rotation_supported, closes its camera when the cards close, prepares the alert's picture frame; the CYD sets its calibration up and lays the climate card out for a portrait panel. Each such stretch is a hook: a substitution whose value is that board's exact lines, written where the old profile had them (${BOOT_ENABLED_HOOK}, ${CLOSE_CARDS_HOOK}, ${APPLY_ROTATION}, ...). A board that adds nothing there names the hook with an empty value. The hooks sit at the end of the board file's substitutions: table, each with a line that says where it lands.
3. A whole section or script. Hardware, online_image, the Rotation select, capture_ui_snapshot: these are the board file's own sections, merged next to the core's. alert_dismiss, alert_flash and wake_display are in both board files because their steps differ (a light.turn_on action on the CYD, the set_backlight script on the Guition); so are ui_self_test and climate_card_refresh, whose layouts differ by design.

Adding a board

1. Copy the board file of the panel that resembles the new one most (a small SPI panel: the CYD; a big RGB panel with capacitive touch: the Guition) to packages/boards/<board>.yaml and change its hardware sections. Keep assertion_level: SILENT in its esp32: block (firmware 0.2.75+): every board builds its firmware the same way, and tests/test_easy_package.py checks it.
2. Fill the sizes table for the new resolution, and go through the hooks: keep, change or empty each one.
3. Add packages/<board>.yaml and <board>.yaml after the existing entries, <board> to ENTRIES in tools/profiles.py and to REFS in screen_manager/app/core.py (the boards installation_yaml() writes a profile for), and a BANDS entry to tools/render_topbar.py. The add-on and the editor still know two boards, a Guition or not: the board a screen is (core.py), ALERT_LIMITS, the camera sizes in camera_feed.py, and the editor's New screen choices and BAR_METRICS (web/src) need the new board too.
4. python3 tools/check_packages.py, esphome config <board>.yaml, tools/check.sh --firmware.

The tiles per page (two columns of three) are still fixed in the firmware, the add-on and the editor (SLOTS_PER_PAGE); a panel that wants more rows is a later round.

How the split was verified

The split was made by a script that replaced every size in the old CYD profile and asserted the value it replaced in both old profiles (195 places, 84 names), and took every hook's text from the old profiles by line. Then the result of esphome config and the generated main.cpp of both boards, through the checkout entry and through the GitHub package route, were compared with the same of the old profiles:

• every scalar, every lambda body and every component is the same, apart from whitespace and #line directives;
• on the CYD, the calibration setup runs in the same lambda as the effects page's hooks instead of a lambda of its own (the same statements, in the same order: ${BOOT_CARDS_TAIL});
• on the Guition, the alert's picture frame is created after the OK button instead of before it (they never overlap), and the hidden camera_image_seed after the labels;
• the order in which ESPHome declares and registers fonts, entities, scripts, API actions, styles, includes and build flags follows the merge (the core's first, the board's after), which changes the numbers in ESPHome's component tables and nothing that runs in sequence.

Every other generated source file of both builds was identical, byte for byte.