Skip to content

System enumerations are invisible to show / describe / search, so their values can only be found by guessing until CE1613 #1102

Description

@MendixMau

Summary

describe entity happily prints attributes typed against System enumerations, but the
enumerations themselves cannot be inspected through any mxcli command — so there is no way to
learn their valid values before the native build rejects a guess.

Environment

  • mxcli: v0.22.0-15-g7b42100d (main HEAD, 2026-09-15)
  • Mendix: 11.13.0, blank mxcli new scaffold
  • Reproducible: yes, on any scaffold

Steps to reproduce

$ mxcli -p app.mpr describe entity System.WorkflowActivityRecord
  ...
  ActivityType: Enumeration(System.WorkflowActivityType),
  State:        Enumeration(System.WorkflowActivityExecutionState),
  ...

$ mxcli -p app.mpr describe enumeration System.WorkflowActivityType
Error: enumeration not found: System.WorkflowActivityType

$ mxcli -p app.mpr show enumerations          # 8 listed, none from System
$ mxcli -p app.mpr search "WorkflowActivityType"
No matches found.

A reasonable guess is then only caught by the native build:

[error] [CE1613] "The selected enumeration value
  'System.WorkflowActivityExecutionState.Finished' no longer exists."

Impact

Any MDL that branches on a System enumeration — workflow activity state, user-task completion
type, and anything else the platform models as an enum — has to be written by guess-and-build.
This blocked writing a diagnostic microflow over GET WORKFLOW ACTIVITY RECORDS entirely.

Same class as #1071 (check --references cannot resolve enumerations in an
attribute declaration), from the other direction: mxcli can read the model but will not tell you
what it read.

Suggested fix

Include System-module enumerations in show enumerations and describe enumeration — read-only
is fine, nobody needs to write them — and let search index them. Failing that, have the
MDL-side rule behind CE1613 list the values that do exist.

Activity

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

      Milestone

      No milestone

      Relationships

      None yet

      Development

      No branches or pull requests

      Issue actions