DESCRIBE ENUMERATION returns empty captions for values that have captions defined in Studio Pro

[brinkhuisjelmer-lgtm]

Summary
mxcli describe enumeration <Module.Enum> (and the equivalent DESCRIBE ENUMERATION MDL command) always prints an empty caption ('') for every enumeration value, even when Studio Pro shows a populated caption for that value in the enumeration editor.

Steps to reproduce

1. In Studio Pro, create an enumeration with a few values and give each value a distinct, non-empty caption (visible in the enumeration editor's Caption column).
2. Save the project.
3. Run mxcli -p project.mpr -c "DESCRIBE ENUMERATION Module.MyEnum".

Expected
Each value's caption is printed, e.g. MyValue 'My Readable Caption'.

Actual
Every value comes back with an empty caption: MyValue '', regardless of what's configured in Studio Pro.

Impact
Because DESCRIBE output is meant to be round-trippable MDL, re-executing it (e.g. to replicate or restore the enumeration) would silently wipe real captions and replace them with empty strings. It also misleads any analysis that relies on DESCRIBE/SHOW to determine whether captions exist — the enum incorrectly appears to have none at all.

Environment

• Confirmed on mxcli v0.18.0 and v0.22.0 (identical behavior on both)
• Windows
• Single-language project (only one language configured) — so this isn't a non-default-language lookup issue; the default/only language's caption isn't read either
• SELECT * FROM CATALOG.ENUMERATIONS also doesn't expose caption text, so there's currently no mxcli-based way to verify a caption exists

Note
Possibly related to #970 (captions written via MDL always landing as en_US), but this is about reading existing captions, not writing them.

[github-actions]

Issue Triage

Summary:
The DESCRIBE ENUMERATION command returns empty captions for enumeration values that have non‑empty captions set in Studio Pro.

Checklist for bug report completeness

Required info	Present?	Details
mxcli version	✅	v0.18.0 and v0.22.0 tested
Mendix version	❌	Not mentioned
Scenario (what the user was trying to do)	✅	Running mxcli describe enumeration <Module.Enum> / DESCRIBE ENUMERATION MDL command
Expected output	✅	Captions should be printed, e.g., MyValue 'My Readable Caption'
Experienced output	✅	Captions appear as empty strings: MyValue ''
AI bug report (mxcli diag --bundle or session log)	❌	Not provided

What’s missing:

• The Mendix version of the project being processed.
• A diagnostic bundle or session log from mxcli diag --bundle (or at least the relevant log excerpt) to help investigate the issue.

Could you please add the Mendix version and attach the diagnostic bundle (or relevant logs) when you have a moment? Thank you for reporting this!

---

Automated triage via OpenRouter — workflow source

[brinkhuisjelmer-lgtm]

Follow-up: this is not specific to Dutch/non-English captions, and it's not limited to captions that pre-date mxcli's involvement.

Minimal repro, fully synthetic (no existing project data involved) against a scratch project:

mxcli -p test.mpr -c "CREATE MODULE ZZ_CaptionTest;"
mxcli -p test.mpr -c "CREATE ENUMERATION ZZ_CaptionTest.ENUM_Test (Value_One 'First Value', Value_Two 'Second Value') FOLDER 'Test';"
mxcli -p test.mpr -c "DESCRIBE ENUMERATION ZZ_CaptionTest.ENUM_Test"

Output:

create or modify enumeration ZZ_CaptionTest.ENUM_Test (
  Value_One '',
  Value_Two ''
) FOLDER 'Test';
/

Both captions were set to plain English text ('First Value', 'Second Value') at creation time, by mxcli itself, seconds before the DESCRIBE call — and still come back empty. So this isn't a matter of an existing Dutch-language project having its captions misread on the way in; a caption written and read back by the same mxcli process, in English, in the same command sequence, doesn't round-trip either.

This suggests the bug is broader than "reading a specific language's captions" — either:

• the caption isn't actually being persisted by CREATE ENUMERATION at all, or
• DESCRIBE ENUMERATION isn't reading the caption field regardless of language.

Happy to help narrow down which of the two if useful.

[brinkhuisjelmer-lgtm]

Found the exact field, via a different mxcli code path.

SEARCH '<caption text>' does find these captions, in both cases from my previous comment:

Synthetic test enum:

ZZ_CaptionTest.ENUM_Test | ENUMERATION | First Value | Enumerations$EnumerationValue.Caption | ZZ_CaptionTest

Real project's pre-existing (Studio Pro-authored, Dutch) enumeration:

Leads.ENUM_LeadFase | ENUMERATION | Fase 1 - Aanname | Enumerations$EnumerationValue.Caption | Leads

Same underlying field in both: Enumerations$EnumerationValue.Caption. So:

• The caption is persisted correctly (confirmed for both an mxcli-created value and a Studio Pro-created one).
• The catalog/full-text-search indexer does read Enumerations$EnumerationValue.Caption correctly — that's how SEARCH finds it.
• DESCRIBE ENUMERATION (and likely SHOW ENUMERATIONS) does not read the same field, and always prints ''.

This narrows it from "captions are unreadable" to: whatever code backs DESCRIBE ENUMERATION isn't wired to Enumerations$EnumerationValue.Caption, while the code backing SEARCH/catalog refresh already is. Might just be a matter of pointing the describe/show enumeration path at the same field the search indexer uses.

[brinkhuisjelmer-lgtm]

Thanks for the follow-up — filling in the gaps:

Mendix version: 11.12.1

Diagnostic info: I didn't attach a mxcli diag --bundle output — worth flagging as a side note: that bundle pulls the entire ~/.mxcli/logs directory (all sessions across all projects for the last several days on the machine), not just the current project/session. In my case that meant real project data from an unrelated app mixed into the archive, which I'm not able to share here. It might be worth scoping --bundle to the current project/session (e.g. by working directory or a --since window) so it's actually safe to attach for bug reports involving non-trivial projects — right now attaching it means sharing your whole recent mxcli history, not just the relevant run.

Instead, here's the clean session-log excerpt for the exact repro from my second comment (from ~/.mxcli/logs, filtered to just these 3 commands — nothing else included):

{"time":"2026-09-16T15:24:59.6807873+02:00","level":"INFO","msg":"session_start","version":"v0.22.0","go":"go1.26.6","os":"windows","arch":"amd64","mode":"batch","args":["mxcli","-p","test.mpr","-c","CREATE MODULE ZZ_CaptionTest2;"],"pid":35472}
{"time":"2026-09-16T15:24:59.9436417+02:00","level":"INFO","msg":"execute","stmt_type":"CreateModuleStmt","stmt_summary":"create module ZZ_CaptionTest2","duration_ms":254}
{"time":"2026-09-16T15:25:00.0115073+02:00","level":"INFO","msg":"session_start","version":"v0.22.0","go":"go1.26.6","os":"windows","arch":"amd64","mode":"batch","args":["mxcli","-p","test.mpr","-c","CREATE ENUMERATION ZZ_CaptionTest2.ENUM_Test (Value_One 'First Value', Value_Two 'Second Value') FOLDER 'Test';"],"pid":13616}
{"time":"2026-09-16T15:25:00.4717695+02:00","level":"INFO","msg":"execute","stmt_type":"CreateEnumerationStmt","stmt_summary":"create enumeration ZZ_CaptionTest2.ENUM_Test","duration_ms":446}
{"time":"2026-09-16T15:25:00.5386937+02:00","level":"INFO","msg":"session_start","version":"v0.22.0","go":"go1.26.6","os":"windows","arch":"amd64","mode":"batch","args":["mxcli","-p","test.mpr","-c","DESCRIBE ENUMERATION ZZ_CaptionTest2.ENUM_Test"],"pid":34160}
{"time":"2026-09-16T15:25:00.9400135+02:00","level":"INFO","msg":"execute","stmt_type":"DescribeStmt","stmt_summary":"describe ENUMERATION ZZ_CaptionTest2.ENUM_Test","duration_ms":387}

Note the logs don't capture the actual DESCRIBE output (the empty captions) — only that the statement ran successfully in 387ms. The mismatch is only visible from stdout, shown in my earlier comments.