Spring Shell

Overview

• spring-shell-starter is versioned independently from Spring Boot — it must be declared with an explicit <version> since spring-boot-starter-parent does not manage Spring Shell's version in its BOM. Spring Shell 4.x requires Spring Boot 4+.
• Spring Shell 4 ships alongside Spring Boot 4 and Spring Framework 7. The legacy annotations @ShellComponent, @ShellMethod, and @ShellOption from org.springframework.shell.standard — deprecated in v3 — have been completely removed in v4.
• Spring Shell autoconfigures the full interactive REPL (built-in commands: help, clear, script, version, quit/exit) with zero additional configuration. When running under Spring Boot, command scanning is activated automatically — no @EnableCommand or @CommandScan is needed on the application class.

Maven Dependency

<properties>
    <spring-shell.version>4.0.2</spring-shell.version>
</properties>

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.shell</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-shell-starter</artifactId>
        <version>${spring-shell.version}</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

• In Spring Shell 4, spring-shell-standard and spring-shell-standard-commands have been merged into spring-shell-core. The starter handles all transitive dependencies.
• The starter now imports spring-boot-starter itself — a separate spring-boot-starter dependency is redundant when using Spring Shell 4.

Defining Shell Commands: @Command and @Option

• All annotations live in org.springframework.shell.core.command.annotation.
• @Command is placed on methods to mark them as shell commands. The declaring class must be a Spring-managed bean (@Component). There is no replacement for @ShellComponent — it was always a @Component variant.
• The command name is set explicitly via the name attribute — there is no automatic camelCase-to-kebab-case derivation from the method name. The description attribute replaces the value string from @ShellMethod.
• Method parameters require @Option for binding — unlike @ShellMethod which used implicit positional arguments. Options are passed on the command line as --longName value or -s value for short names.
• The return value behavior is unchanged: returning a non-void type prints the value automatically; a void method must write output explicitly (e.g., System.out.println).

package com.mtitek.spring.shell;

import org.springframework.shell.core.command.annotation.Command;
import org.springframework.shell.core.command.annotation.Option;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class ShellCommands {

    @Command(name = "min-value", description = "Display Min Value")
    public int minValue() {
        return 1_000;
    }

    @Command(name = "max-value", description = "Display Max Value")
    public void maxValue() {
        System.out.println(1_000_000);
    }

    @Command(name = "to-lower-case", description = "Convert to lower case")
    public String toLowerCase(
            @Option(longName = "input", shortName = 'i', description = "String to convert", defaultValue = "HELLO")
            String input) {
        return input.toLowerCase();
    }

    @Command(name = "add-values", description = "Add two values")
    public Integer addValues(@Option(shortName = 'a') Integer a, @Option(shortName = 'b') Integer b) {
        return a + b;
    }
}

• @Option(longName = "input", shortName = 'i', defaultValue = "HELLO") — defaultValue makes the option optional; omitting it from the command line uses the declared default.
• @Option(shortName = 'a') without longName — the option is available only as -a; no --a long form is registered.

Running the Shell

shell:> help
AVAILABLE COMMANDS

Built-In Commands
    clear: Clear the terminal screen
    help: Show help about available commands
    quit, exit: Exit the shell
    script: Execute commands from a script file
    version: Show version info
Shell Commands
    add-values: Add two values
    max-value: Display Max Value
    min-value: Display Min Value
    to-lower-case: Convert to lower case

shell:> min-value
1000

shell:> max-value
1000000

shell:> to-lower-case --input ABC
abc

shell:> add-values -a 5 -b 7
12

Notes

• Built-in commands in v4 are reduced compared to v3 — history and stacktrace are no longer listed.
• Options and arguments can be specified in any order. Both --longName=value and --longName value forms are accepted, as well as -s=value and -s value for short names.
• Spring Shell's interactive loop blocks SpringApplication.run() until quit or exit is typed. For non-TTY/CI execution, set spring.shell.interactive.enabled=false in application.properties.