Hi, To be honest Clikt was never considered, but looking at it I would choose picocli again due to its zero-deps (no kotlin), annotation-based approach, ability to hook in the doc-generator, more usage in java-land etc.
We do not always need to pick THE BEST tool for everything, sometimes it is ok to go with something that has a high adoption and is clearly an improvement IMO. When it comes to shrinking the shell scripts, that is not directly enabled by PicoCLI. But I believe that the easier and more pleasant it is to maintail java CLI tools, the faster we'll be able to move more logic over. Jan > 15. mai 2026 kl. 13:54 skrev Christos Malliaridis <[email protected]>: > > Nice to see efforts towards improving the CLI. > > I haven't tracked any discussions since the time I was following a similar > approach with Clikt and dropped it due to the lack of time. Is there > somewhere a document or discussion thread that provides more information > why PicoCLI is a good choice, and which of the current problems are > addressed by it (besides the benefits you mentioned above)? > > I would be interested to see how it compares to Clikt that I chose back > then and learn from it. I also remember that the platform-specific shell > scripts and the test coverage were two of the bigger issues we wanted to > address. Are these addressed with PicoCLI? > > Best, > Christos > > On Fri, May 15, 2026 at 2:24 PM Jan Høydahl <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> An effort has started to transition Solr from commons-cli to the more >> capable PicoCLI (https://picocli.info). >> >> Many reasons it will serve us better >> * More modern annotation based approach, easier to maintain >> * Built in support for sub commands >> * Keep all option docs, usage docs, examples etc in code annotations -> no >> doc drift >> * Auto generate CLI documentation for the reference guide >> >> The JIRA for this effort is >> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SOLR-17697 >> >> If you want to help, there are instructions in the JIRA for how to join in. >> The effort is divided in many small tasks and is well suited for new >> contributors. >> >> Jan >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] >> For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
