CHANGELOG.md

Changelog

All notable changes to xpp-lens (called xpp-graft up to 1.2.0). Versions follow <Version> in src/XppLens/XppLens.csproj; release tags are vX.Y.Z.

1.4.2

Fixed

• An installation by install.ps1 (the ZIP package, and every update from a version before 1.3.0) left xpplens off the PATH ("The term 'xpplens' is not recognized"), with no Start menu entries and no entry in Windows' installed apps. install.ps1 now does what the setup program does: the program folder on the user's PATH (kept as REG_EXPAND_SZ, so %VAR% entries keep working; new terminals see it at once), the same Start menu entries with the icon, and an installed-apps entry that runs uninstall.ps1. When the setup program installed xpp-lens for the user, its entries stay; the setup program replaces those of install.ps1 when it takes a folder over. uninstall.ps1 removes the PATH entry, and the Start menu and installed-apps entries install.ps1 made.

1.4.1

Fixed

• xpplens <command> --help stopped with "unknown option '--help'"; it now shows the help of that command (also -h and xpplens help <command>).
• xpplens help did not list config --standard-models, config --remove-standard-publisher and register/unregister --exe. A test now checks that every command and option the program accepts is in the help.

1.4.0

Added

• Claude Code skills in the package: /xpp-ponytail (the smallest complete X++ change: configuration, standard, the model's own code, a narrow extension, only then new code) and /xpp-ponytail-review (a review of an X++ change with a concrete case and the smallest fix per finding), built on the xpp_* tools. Based on Ponytail (MIT), rewritten for X++; the notice is in skills/THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md. The source of the skills is now this repository (skills\).
• The setup program and install.ps1 copy them to %USERPROFILE%\.claude\skills, in the language of the installation (English or Polish descriptions and review headings: the wizard's language, or install.ps1 -SkillsLanguage en|pl, by default the Windows language), kept by updates. A check box in the wizard and install.ps1 -NoSkills skip them.
• A skill changed locally is never overwritten or removed: skills-installed.json in the installation folder keeps the SHA-256 of what was installed; a changed skill is kept with a warning (the wizard shows it, install.ps1 prints it, xpplens status lists it after a silent update). The uninstallers remove only unchanged skills they installed. A folder of that name not installed by xpp-lens is left alone unless it equals the package's copy.
• xpplens skills [install [--lang en|pl] | remove | status].

1.3.3

Added

• An icon (a lens over X++ on a violet tile) for xpplens.exe, the setup program, the Start menu and Windows' installed apps; drawn by packaging/icon/make-icon.ps1.
• Start menu entry xpp-lens: a console that shows the command list and takes any xpplens command, also right after installing, before Explorer picks up the new PATH.

Fixed

• xpplens failed to start with "Failed to determine default extraction location" when TEMP pointed to a missing folder (a remote desktop session's Temp\<n> after a cleanup), e.g. from the Start menu entries. The SQLite library now ships next to xpplens.exe (bin\e_sqlite3.dll) instead of being extracted to TEMP at every start; the setup program renames it like the running EXE when an open Claude session holds it.

1.3.2 — 2026-10-26

Fixed

• The model filter of xpp_find, xpp_refs, xpp_changed and property= listings took one name only: a list such as model="Contoso;Fabrikam*" matched nothing and the answer was empty. All of them now take names separated by ; with * and ?, like xpp_grep already did.
• xpp_find "Table.Extension.Field" split the name at the first dot and found nothing; a field added in a named extension (CustTable.ContosoExtension.MyField) is now found.
• xpp_method with only lines (no method) returned nothing; it now shows those lines of the object's file and the methods they belong to — the way to read a spot named by a build error or a grep hit.

Changed

• xpp_extensions is several times faster for objects with many extension classes (measured warm: SalesTable 9.2 s → 0.5 s, VendTable 5.1 s → 1.8 s): the Chain of Command details of each extension class were looked up by a column without an index, which read the whole reference table once per extension class.
• xpp_join reads the table relations from a small index of its own instead of the whole member table (the first call of a server and every CLI call: 1.3 s → 0.65 s); the index is built once, in a few seconds.

1.3.1 — 2026-10-26

Fixed

• xpp_refs name="Table.Field" answered "no references": the whole text was taken as an object name, while xpp_find takes that form. xpp_refs now reads Table.Field / Class::method as the object and its member (unless an object has that whole name, as extensions named Base.Model do) and says how it read the name, so the answer equals name=Table member=Field: code reads (also after Table::find().Field) and form controls.
• xpp_object did not show whether a table is per company: the XML leaves out SaveDataPerCompany and TableType when they have their default values. Tables now always list them, marked (default) when not in the file, and xpp_find property=SaveDataPerCompany reports Yes for those tables instead of -.

1.3.0 — 2026-10-26

Added

• Setup program xpp-lens-setup-X.Y.Z.exe (Inno Setup): a wizard in Polish or English for the current user, no administrator rights. It finds PackagesLocalDirectory (xpplens detect, or choose the folder), asks for the label languages and whether to index the Microsoft standard, registers xpp-lens in Claude Desktop and Claude Code and offers to build the index. It puts xpplens on the user's PATH, adds Start menu entries (status, update the index, check for updates, uninstall) and an entry in Windows' installed apps; uninstalling asks whether to remove the index. An installation made by install.ps1 (C:\Tools\xpp-lens) is taken over in place with its settings and index.
• xpplens update --install runs the setup program of the release silently into the current installation (SHA-256 checked, --restart-claude passed on); releases without one still go through the ZIP and install.ps1.
• restart-claude.ps1: the Claude Desktop restart of the installers, shared by install.ps1 and the setup program.
• Test releases: a version can first be published as X.Y.Z-beta.N, marked as a pre-release on GitHub. xpplens update never offers it; xpplens update --install --pre installs the newest release including test releases, so a new version can be tried on one machine before everyone gets it. The regular X.Y.Z later replaces a test release through the usual xpplens update --install.
• xpplens version, status and the MCP server report the full version of a test release (1.3.0-beta.1); versions compare with test releases before their final version (1.3.0-beta.2 < 1.3.0).

Development

• Work happens on the branch dev; main always holds the last regular release. release.ps1 -Version X.Y.Z -Pre publishes a test release from dev; release.ps1 -Version X.Y.Z opens the pull request dev → main, waits for its CI, merges it (merge commit), tags the merge and publishes the release, then moves dev to main. CI also runs for pushes to dev. The release notes of a test release come from the section of its final version.

1.2.9 — 2026-10-14

Fixed

• The file properties of xpplens.exe showed a garbled title and copyright (xpp-lens — …, Copyright ©): the project file held those characters double-encoded.

Development

• release.ps1 -Version X.Y.Z releases a version end to end and stops at the first failure: CHANGELOG section and free tag, <Version>, a scan for private names (customers, partners, people) from a local list that is never part of the repository, Release build and tests, commit and push, CI, tag, Release workflow, and a check of the published package (SHA-256 digest, layout). -DryRun runs the checks only. JSON from the GitHub CLI is filtered in PowerShell: Windows PowerShell 5.1 drops the inner quotes of a --jq filter passed to a native program.

1.2.8 — 2026-10-14

Fixed

• Restarting Claude Desktop at the end of an update could close Claude and fail to start it again ("Cannot process argument transformation on parameter 'Package'"): after Claude had updated itself, the running process was in an older version folder than the installed package, so the package was not found. The application is now found by its package family (from the Start menu, then the package list) and the way to start it is worked out before Claude is stopped — if it cannot be, Claude is left running with a note to restart it yourself. Per-user installations start through their launcher, which always runs the current version.
• The restart question did not show the new version ($version? is a different variable in PowerShell).
• Release packages since 1.2.5 nested their files as xpp-lens/xpp-lens/dist/xpp-lens/… because the release workflow passes a relative output folder; pack.ps1 now works with the full path. Updating was not affected (the updater finds install.ps1 at any depth), unpacking by hand was.

1.2.7 — 2026-10-13

Added

• X++ kernel types are indexed as the compiled model Kernel: QueryBuildDataSource, QueryBuildRange, FormDataObject, xFormRun, xRecord, Map and the other system classes with complete method signatures (parameter types, defaults, static / final), base classes, system enums, EDTs and tables — about 3 400 objects read from the resources of bin\Microsoft.Dynamics.AX.Metadata.dll (the metadata the X++ compiler uses), without loading the assembly. Indexed in the background with the standard tier; re-read when the assembly changes.
• xpp_object data sources show their behaviour properties (InsertIfEmpty, InsertAtEnd, AllowCreate / AllowEdit / AllowDelete, LinkType, OnlyFetchActive, DelayActive, Index, CounterField…) and the number of fields; parent=<data source> shows one data source with all its fields.

Fixed

• xpp_find "Table.member" did not find fields and methods added in extensions of the table (found only with *.member or the extension name). The object part now also matches extensions that name the object as their target; the base object's own members come first.

1.2.6 — 2026-10-13

Changed

• Faster answers, mostly after a pause, when the OS has dropped the index from its file cache and the disk is slow. Measured on a real installation before / after: a substring search (xpp_find *Text*) right after the server starts 41 s → 1 s, later 1.3 s → 0.2 s; earlier usage logs showed single calls of 100–180 s.
  • Queries run in parallel, each on its own connection: one slow query no longer holds up the others (they used to finish together, all waiting for the first one).
  • The periodic rescan of custom model files runs on a timer in the MCP server instead of inside a query; files changed on disk (seen by the watchers) are still indexed before the next query.
  • Wildcard and substring name searches (xpp_find *Invoice*, "Similar" suggestions) are matched against the distinct names of objects, methods and members kept in memory (about 730 000 names, read in under a second at start and after index changes); the index then answers only exact names instead of scanning whole tables.
  • Results of xpp_find are ordered completely (ties broken by name), so the same question gives the same answer.

Added

• xpp_find property=… lists root properties of every object matching the name, type and model filters, from the index: query="*" type=entity model=Contoso property="PublicEntityName;PublicCollectionName"; property="PublicEntityName=*Order*" filters by value (xpplens find "*" --type entity --property …).
• The usage log records, per call, the time spent waiting for the index refresh and the query time; xpplens stats shows them (p95 wait, p95 query, and per slowest call). status shows the names held in memory.

1.2.5 — 2026-10-09

Changed

• Updating no longer needs Claude to be closed. The installer does not stop running xpplens.exe processes any more: a file in use is renamed to *.old, so open sessions keep working on the old version and new sessions start the new one; the next start of xpplens deletes the leftovers. At the end the installer offers to restart Claude Desktop; xpplens update --install --restart-claude (install.ps1 -RestartClaude) does it without asking. Claude Code processes in terminals are never stopped.
• xpp_grep accepts several names separated by ; in objectName and model, like the other tools. The answer for standard code without a scope, or with too large a scope, points to xpp_refs / xpp_callers for names.
• The release package stores its paths with /, as the ZIP format requires.
• GitHub Actions: actions/checkout v7 and actions/setup-dotnet v6 (Node 24).

Fixed

• Command line options: -install was silently ignored (only --install was known), so xpplens update -install only checked for the update. Options now work with one or two dashes and as --name=value, may come before the arguments, and an unknown option or a missing value stops with an error that lists the options of the command.

1.2.4 — 2026-10-07

Added

• xpp_build_errors reads the result of a Visual Studio project build (BuildProjectResult.xml) next to that of the model build. The header shows both build times and the time of the model DLL. Diagnostics of the newer build come first and replace those of the model build for the same objects.
• xpp_build_errors lists the objects changed after the newest build, which are not compiled yet. After a project build it also lists the objects changed between the model build and the project build, which are compiled only if they are in the project. This answers "did my build take everything?" in one call.
• xpp_changed since=build (xpplens changed --since build): per package, the objects changed after its last build.

Changed

• xpplens status / xpp_status start with the xpp-lens version (and an available update) and show the index tiers and counts as tables. The console gets box-drawing frames; output redirected to a file or a pipe, or --ascii, gets +-| frames; xpp_status returns Markdown tables. Numbers are grouped by thousands; long model lists come last.

Fixed

• After a project build, xpp_build_errors showed the older model build as the latest result. Objects changed after the build were marked only when they had a diagnostic; with a clean build they were not mentioned at all.

1.2.3 — 2026-10-07

Fixed

• xpp_build_errors pointed at wrong lines: the compiler numbers lines through the object's whole code (the declaration without its closing brace, then every method in file order), not from the start of the method. Lines are now translated that way and accepted only when they fall into the method the compiler named. Metadata diagnostics (form designs, controls, form extensions) show the object's file and the element instead of a raw path. Methods of form data sources and controls show where the method starts; their exact line is not mapped yet.

1.2.2 — 2026-10-07

Added

• xpplens update checks GitHub for a newer release; xpplens update --install downloads it, verifies its SHA-256 digest and runs its installer, keeping settings and index. status mentions an available update found by the last check. This is the only network access of xpp-lens and happens only when the command is run.
• Automated releases: pushing a tag vX.Y.Z runs the tests, checks the tag against the project version, builds the package and publishes the release with its notes taken from this file (release-notes.ps1).
• Continuous integration: GitHub Actions builds the solution and runs the tests on Windows for every push and pull request.
• SECURITY.md and issue forms for bug reports and feature requests, which ask not to share customer code or data.

Changed

• xpplens status / xpp_status no longer count all references and labels (tens of seconds on a cold disk); --counts / counts=true shows them. A standard tier that is listed but not indexed is explained, with the command that indexes it.
• xpplens build --std-only switches indexStandard on when an installation was made without the standard tier.
• Running install.ps1 over an existing installation keeps its label languages and PackagesLocalDirectory unless -Languages / -PackagesDir are given.

Fixed

• Taking over an xpp-graft installation could leave the index behind and build a new one from scratch. The index files are now moved one by one by xpplens migrate and checked; when they cannot be moved (in use, or the new folder already holds an index) the new configuration keeps using the old index where it is.

1.2.1 — 2026-10-06

Changed

• Renamed from xpp-graft to xpp-lens, to avoid confusion with the unrelated Graft project. Program xpplens.exe, MCP server xpp-lens, configuration xpplens.json, default folders C:\Tools\xpp-lens and %LOCALAPPDATA%\xpp-lens, environment variables XPPLENS_CONFIG / XPPLENS_VERBOSE / XPPLENS_TIMING / XPPLENS_USAGE. The MCP tool names (xpp_find, …) are unchanged.
• install.ps1 takes over an existing xpp-graft installation: settings (incl. label languages), the index and the usage log move over without a rebuild, and the old MCP entries are removed. The old folder is left for you to delete.
• Release packages are named after the version (xpp-lens-1.2.1.zip).

1.2.0 — 2026-10-06

Added

• Usage statistics: every MCP call is logged locally (%LOCALAPPDATA%\xpp-graft\usage); xppgraft stats shows tokens, time and empty answers per tool, the largest and slowest calls and the latest empty answers. xppgraft config --usage-log false switches it off.
• Several lookups in one call: xpp_find and xpp_object take names separated by ;; xpp_method takes method="a;b" or objectName="Obj.method;Obj2::method".
• Method fragments: xpp_method with match (regex) and/or lines returns only those lines with context, numbered with file lines; the signature and variable declarations are always included, skipped parts are marked. Long methods returned in full carry a hint about it.
• Callers inside Microsoft code: the standard tier now stores call references (calls, new, intrinsics) — xpp_callers lists them after custom code; standard=false leaves them out. About +300 MB of index; xppgraft config --standard-code false keeps the old dictionary-only standard tier.
• Chained calls: Table::find(x).method(), a.b().c(), new T().m() and var x = A::b() are typed from method return types — in xpp_callers, xpp_refs (with member) and xpp_callees.
• New tools:
  • xpp_scaffold — CoC wrapper (exact signature, default values removed, warnings for private / final / non-wrappable methods), table / form / data source / control / field event handlers with parameters learned from existing handlers, delegate subscribers, pre/post handlers; class names follow the pattern found in your models.
  • xpp_build_errors — errors and warnings from BuildModelResult.xml mapped to XML file lines, flags files changed after the build.
  • xpp_security — menu item / form → privileges (granted access) → duties → roles, and privilege / duty / role views.
  • xpp_join — shortest relation path between two tables as a ready X++ join.
  • xpp_entity — data entity overview (public names, staging, data source tree with joins, field mapping, keys) or the entities that use a table.
  • xpp_changed — objects changed on disk since a time, per model.
• Matching CLI commands: scaffold, build-errors, security, join, entity, changed, stats; method --match/--lines/--context, callers --standard false.
• xUnit test project (tests/XppGraft.Tests) with neutral sample AOT XML; runs in Visual Studio Test Explorer or with dotnet test.
• Visual Studio launch profiles for the new commands.

Changed

• Analyzer upgrades re-parse custom models once at start-up and re-index the standard tier once in the background, package by package (an interrupted run resumes) — no manual rebuild after updating.
• Parser: data entity keys, query / entity data source joins (on Field=DataSource.Field) and data source tree, privilege entry point grants (grant=Read,Update,…).
• Tool descriptions no longer contain installation-specific examples.
• The release package also ships CHANGELOG.md and LICENSE; build.ps1 -Test runs the tests before building.
• The WAL file is trimmed after checkpoints (journal_size_limit), so a large rebuild does not leave it at peak size.

1.1.0 — 2026-10-06

First published release, under the MIT License.

• Three index tiers: custom models (full code references), Microsoft standard (dictionary), compiled-only packages (from .xref, bin\*.md and resource DLLs); xpp_status lists packages on disk that are not indexed.
• Tools: xpp_find, xpp_object, xpp_method, xpp_callers, xpp_callees, xpp_refs, xpp_extensions, xpp_grep, xpp_label, xpp_status.
• Control and menu trees with parent / depth / filter, full control paths, ReferenceField / ReplacementFieldGroup, menu extension parent and position.
• Literal underscore in name searches; dotted extension names (e.g. *Staging.Contoso) found as objects.
• Index follows the files on disk (watcher + periodic scan); read-only index detection with live parsing.
• Portable installer / uninstaller, configurable languages, models and PackagesLocalDirectory (given or detected).