Issue: Improve Beta Feature Visibility Control in PyFluent

[seanpearsonuk]

🗂️ Issue: Improve Beta Feature Visibility Control in PyFluent

Current Status

PyFluent currently provides users with a session-level method (enable_beta_features()) to activate beta features. However:

• The settings API does not yet support the concept of hiding or exposing individual beta-level items based on this flag.
• As a result, even if the enable_beta_features() switch is used, there is no mechanism to dynamically hide or reveal beta settings objects or properties.
• There is also currently no trustable mechanism to ensure developers properly classify or gate such features.
  • Example: materials.database remains visible in the API but is really just a thin, unstructured TUI wrapper — it arguably should not be exposed as part of a stable API surface.

Problem

This means:

• Users may see unfinished, low-quality, or redundant API items that appear fully supported but are actually experimental.
• There is no clear, consistent signal to developers or downstream tools about which parts of the API are stable vs. beta.
• There is a risk of accidental usage of non-final parts of the API in production workflows.

Proposal

To address this, consider:

• Introducing explicit beta path tagging for all settings API objects, parameters, and methods intended to be gated.
• Allowing PyFluent to maintain its own internal list of beta paths, decoupled from developers' manual filtering.
• Linking this list directly to the enable_beta_features() switch, so that non-beta users cannot access or see these paths.
• Providing clear warnings or structured metadata when beta items are exposed.

Example Use Case

The current materials.database situation illustrates this gap:

• It is visible to users but behaves like an old-style TUI object.
• There is no practical reason for it to appear in the documented stable API surface at this stage.

Benefits

• Clearer boundaries between stable and experimental capabilities.
• Reduced accidental reliance on unfinished or unreviewed features.
• Stronger alignment with the intended quality promise of the PyFluent API.
• Improved ability for LLMs, IDEs, and doc tools to respect feature maturity.

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Request: Please share design ideas for how we could implement and maintain this more robust beta feature control.