Execution

Version 2.1.x introduced built-in support to distinguish between interactive and non-interactive modes. This makes it easier to use the shell as a simple command-line tool without requiring customization.

Currently, interactive mode is entered if any command line options are passed when starting or running a shell from a command line. This works especially well when a shell application is compiled with Native Support.

Some commands may not have any useful meanings when they run in interactive mode or (conversely) in non-interactive mode. For example, a built-in exit command would have no meaning in non-interactive mode, because it is used to exit interactive mode.

ShellRunner is the main interface to run a shell. There can be only one ShellRunner per application context.

Three ShellRunner implementations exist, named SystemShellRunner, JLineShellRunner and NonInteractiveShellRunner. By default, it is the interactive SystemShellRunner that is used.

To enable non-interactive mode, you can set the spring.shell.interactive.enabled property to false. This will switch the ShellRunner implementation to NonInteractiveShellRunner.

Spring Shell provides a debug mode that can be enabled by setting the spring.shell.debug.enabled property to true. When enabled, this mode provides additional debugging information for command execution by printing stack traces of errors, which can be useful for troubleshooting and development purposes.