Working Outside Studio Pro

A project edited with mxcli, git and an editor is sometimes opened in Studio Pro afterwards. Two kinds of state that Studio Pro depends on are invisible to mx check, and mxcli checks both.

The ContentsHash index: mxcli fix hashes

In an MPR v2 project (Mendix 10.18 and later) the .mpr file indexes every mprcontents/**/*.mxunit file by its hash: Unit.ContentsHash is base64(SHA-256(file)). mxcli’s writer and Studio Pro keep the two in step. Anything else that changes a .mxunit does not: restoring a unit with git checkout, git restore, a revert or a merge leaves the index describing bytes that are no longer on disk. mx check and MxBuild read the files and do not notice; Studio Pro uses the index to decide what changed.

mxcli fix hashes -p app.mpr            # verify; exits 1 when something is off
mxcli fix hashes -p app.mpr --repair   # rewrite mismatched hashes from the files

The repair treats the files as the source of truth and never changes them. It updates every hash in one SQLite transaction, and, like every mxcli write, is refused while Studio Pro has the project open (the .mpr.lock beside it). An MPR v1 project keeps unit contents inside the .mpr, has no index to drift, and the command says so.

mxcli exec and mxcli docker check run the verify too and print a one-line warning when it finds a mismatch or a missing file. It never fails them; measured on a 900-unit project, the whole verify takes about 0.2 s.

Git states that crash Studio Pro

Studio Pro 11.13 fails to open a project with “Unable to find ‘system’ property in ‘system’” when the project folder is a git repository and

• the checked-out branch has no upstream — remedy: git push -u origin <branch> before opening the project (or git remote add origin <url> first, if the repository has no remote); or
• git reports “detected dubious ownership” — typical for a folder shared between the host and a devcontainer, owned by a different user on each side. Remedy, on the machine that runs Studio Pro: git config --global --add safe.directory <path>.

mxcli docker check, mxcli run --local and mxcli diag -p app.mpr warn about both. The warnings are advice and never fail a command. They are silent:

• outside a git repository, or when git is not installed;
• on a detached HEAD — how CI systems and git checkout <sha> leave a repository; there is no branch to push, and nobody opens such a checkout in Studio Pro;
• when the CI environment variable is set, or MXCLI_NO_GIT_WARNINGS=1.

Dubious ownership is judged by the git mxcli runs. Inside a devcontainer that is the container’s git, which may see ownership differently from the host’s Studio Pro — so a clean report from inside the container does not rule it out on the host.

One report: mxcli diag -p

mxcli diag -p app.mpr

prints mxcli’s diagnostics followed by a Project section with both checks.

Commit metadata: mxcli git note

Studio Pro attaches a git note under refs/notes/mx_metadata to every commit it makes:

{"BranchName":"feature-x","ModelerVersion":"11.13.0",
 "ModelChanges":[{"Status":"Modified","UnitID":"…","UnitType":"Forms$Page",
                  "UnitName":"Home_Web","Module":"MyModule"}],
 "RelatedStories":[],"SolutionVersion":"","MPRFormatVersion":"Version2","HasModelerVersion":true}

It reads the note to check that a revision’s Mendix version is compatible and to show what the revision changed. A commit made with plain git has none, and Studio Pro 11.13 back-fills one with "(unknown)" values and no changes.

mxcli git note -p app.mpr            # preview the notes for commits not yet pushed
mxcli git note -p app.mpr --write    # attach them
git push origin <branch> refs/notes/mx_metadata

The note is computed from the commit: the .mpr unit index and the mprcontents units at the commit and at its parent. With no commit argument it covers @{upstream}..HEAD, or HEAD when the branch has no upstream. A note Studio Pro wrote is kept unless you pass --force; a placeholder is replaced.

Measured against Studio Pro’s own notes on a Team Server repository: for ordinary commits the note is identical, header and change list. For a Mendix version upgrade the header is identical but the change list is longer than Studio Pro’s, because an upgrade re-serialises units in ways only Studio Pro knows to ignore. Upgrades are done in Studio Pro, which writes its own note. MPR v1 projects are not supported.

Push the notes ref soon. git push does not push notes, and while the project is open Studio Pro fetches every few minutes and force-replaces the local refs/notes/mx_metadata with the Team Server’s copy, discarding notes that were not pushed. If that happens, mxcli git note --write again: the discarded notes have become placeholders, which it replaces.

The whole workflow (server branches, what to stage, never merging model history with git) is in the teamserver-git skill that mxcli init installs.