Opening & indexing a root

The Studio’s foundation is an index of the entire ERP object catalog. It reads the metadata folder the moment a project opens and stays current as files change.

Root resolution

1. XPP_AOT_ROOT environment variable — explicit override, wins over everything.
2. File → Open AOT folder… — persisted to settings, re-indexed immediately.
3. Default — samples/ in dev builds; an empty per-user folder in the packaged app until you pick a root.

Indexing tiers

Tier	Content	What you get
1	Descriptors & headers (no XML parsing)	AOT explorer browsable almost immediately
2	Your models, fully parsed	Methods, enum values for your code
3	Microsoft models (Application* prefix)	Full system coverage
4	Full-text search tail	Method sources drained into the FTS index

The status bar’s AOT segment shows live progress (files/s, %, ETA).

Partial means partial — and we say so

While tier 4 runs, global-search results are flagged partial: element and method-name lookup is already complete; only source full-text matches may be missing. index-tier-complete fires when the index has fully converged.

Caching & freshness

• The index persists per root at %APPDATA%\xpp-studio\aot-index\<hash>.db — an unchanged root reloads from cache in seconds.
• A chunked background pass reconciles file changes after load.
• Saving a file in the editor triggers an incremental reindex of just that file.

Forced clean rebuild

Seeing a full re-index on every launch? Check the [aot] log lines; deleting the root’s .db file forces a clean rebuild.

Verify it worked

• After a first open, the explorer answers immediately and the tier-2/3 content fills in behind it.
• On the second launch, the log line [aot] loaded N elements from cache in Xs confirms the persisted index was reused.
• index-tier-complete fires; search results stop carrying the partial flag.

If it goes wrong

• “database is locked” at boot — a transient WAL race with the indexing worker; the language server retries with backoff and recovers on its own.
• Re-indexes every launch — check the [aot] log lines, then delete %APPDATA%\xpp-studio\aot-index\<hash>.db to force one clean rebuild.
• Loose files shown as their own “models” — cosmetic; model names come from the first folder segment, and real Microsoft layouts group correctly.

The AOT explorer already browsable while deeper indexing tiers continue in the status bar