Built in help for single commands is not working anymore

[georgmittendorfer]

In spring shell 3.x you could retrieve help for single commends. It did show the possible options and descriptions. This isn't working anymore in spring shell 4.

[piotrooo]

For me, this is a missing feature, so we treat it as a bug. WDYT @fmbenhassine?

[fmbenhassine]

Can you please elaborate on what is not working?

If you type the command name followed by "-h" or "--help", then you will get the help of the command (assuming it is providing a help string). Here is an example from the hello world sample:

shell:>hello --help
A command that greets the user with 'Hello ${name}!'. Usage: hello [-n | --name]=<name>

Are you referring to built-in commands? Or to the ability to pass a command name to the help command? Please share what you type in the terminal and your expected output.

[dobleralfred]

In spring-shell 3.4.0:

	@Command(command = "app", description = "select the application for the sync operations. eg: 'app A' or 'app B'")
	public String app(@Option(longNames = "name", shortNames = 'n', required = true,
							  description = "select the application, available values are A or B") @OptionValues(
		provider = "applicationValues") String appName) {
       ....
}

shell:>help app
NAME
       app - select the application for the sync operations. eg: 'app A' or 'app B'

SYNOPSIS
       app [--name String] --help 

OPTIONS
       --name or -n String
       select the application, available values are A or B
       [Mandatory]

       --help or -h 
       help for app
       [Optional]

in spring-shell 4.0.0:

	@Command(name = "app", description = "select the application for the sync operations. eg: 'app A' or 'app B'",
			 completionProvider = "applicationValues")
	public String app(@Option(longName = "name", shortName = 'n', required = true,
							  description = "select the application, available values are A or B") String name) {
...
}

shell:>help app
Command help app not found
AVAILABLE COMMANDS

Built-In Commands
        script: Execute commands from a script file
        clear: Clear the terminal screen
        history: Display or save the history of previously run commands
        version: Show version info
        quit, exit: Exit the shell
        help: Display help about available commands
SyncPasswords Commands
        app: select the application for the sync operations. eg: 'app A' or 'app B'

For following command, the result is "empty"

shell:>app --help

shell:>

Version 4.0.0 is missing all the option information provided by version 3.4.0 for a command.

[mhdstg]

One addition: in version 3.4 you could use help app and app --help and the result is the same.
In version 4.0 help app no longer works and instead the standard help output is displayed.

[georgmittendorfer]

Can you please elaborate on what is not working?

If you type the command name followed by "-h" or "--help", then you will get the help of the command (assuming it is providing a help string). Here is an example from the hello world sample:

shell:>hello --help
A command that greets the user with 'Hello ${name}!'. Usage: hello [-n | --name]=<name>

Are you referring to built-in commands? Or to the ability to pass a command name to the help command? Please share what you type in the terminal and your expected output.

I was talking about the help information for a command (built-in and new commands). In spring shell 3.x the help content automatically got generated. hello --help worked without providing a help string and listed all the available options. See comment from @dobleralfred

Furthermore it would be nice, if the built-in commands would provide help information. For example script --help because the syntax script -- /path/to/file is not intuitive.

shell:>script --help
Unable to run command script: Script command expects exactly one argument: the absolute path to the script file to execute.

That said the possibility to provide an explicit help string for a command (I wasn't aware of it) is enough for me to work around this issue.

[nytro77]

Please revert to the 3.4 way of creating auto generated help. At least if no help is provided for the command.

The 4.0 way of (not) doing things breaks what is stated in the documentation.

Typing -h or --help shows more information about a command, including the available parameters, their type, whether they are mandatory or not, and other details

[fmbenhassine]

Thank you all for the feedback. Yes this is a regression. I will plan the fix for 4.0.1.