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Options validation error messages in non-interactive mode

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@czpilar is already working on this.

Since Oct 5, 2026.

  • #1392 by @czpilar — open

Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
65/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
java, spring-boot
Domain
cli

Research direction

Start with NonInteractiveShellRunner, which appears in the reported stack trace, and inspect how validation failures become CommandExecutionException messages. The related customization points named in the issue are CommandExceptionResolver and CommandCatalogCustomizer; done means non-interactive validation exposes the validator's message instead of only USAGE_ERROR, with stack-trace suppression considered separately.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Using Spring Shell 4.0.3 with Spring Boot 4.0.8, non-interactive mode (spring.shell.interactive.enabled=false).

When I add Bean Validation constraints to my @Options, and I start my application by specifying an argument which does not satisfy them, I get a very generic message, which does not explain at all what went wrong:

2026-10-02T16:45:29.372+02:00 ERROR 15460 --- [MyApp] [           main] o.s.boot.SpringApplication               : Application run failed

org.springframework.shell.core.command.CommandExecutionException: Unable to execute command plan -n testGen -c 0: USAGE_ERROR
	at org.springframework.shell.core.NonInteractiveShellRunner.executeCommand(NonInteractiveShellRunner.java:162) ~[spring-shell-core-4.0.3.jar:4.0.3]
	at org.springframework.shell.core.NonInteractiveShellRunner.run(NonInteractiveShellRunner.java:95) ~[spring-shell-core-4.0.3.jar:4.0.3]
	at org.springframework.shell.core.autoconfigure.ShellRunnerAutoConfiguration.lambda$springShellApplicationRunner$0(ShellRunnerAutoConfiguration.java:39) ~[spring-shell-core-autoconfigure-4.0.3.jar:4.0.3]
	at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.lambda$callRunner$0(SpringApplication.java:788) ~[spring-boot-4.0.8.jar:4.0.8]
	at org.springframework.util.function.ThrowingConsumer$1.acceptWithException(ThrowingConsumer.java:82) ~[spring-core-7.0.9.jar:7.0.9]
	at org.springframework.util.function.ThrowingConsumer.accept(ThrowingConsumer.java:60) ~[spring-core-7.0.9.jar:7.0.9]
	at org.springframework.util.function.ThrowingConsumer$1.accept(ThrowingConsumer.java:86) ~[spring-core-7.0.9.jar:7.0.9]
	at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.callRunner(SpringApplication.java:800) ~[spring-boot-4.0.8.jar:4.0.8]
	at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.callRunner(SpringApplication.java:788) ~[spring-boot-4.0.8.jar:4.0.8]
	at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.lambda$callRunners$0(SpringApplication.java:776) ~[spring-boot-4.0.8.jar:4.0.8]
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachOp$OfRef.accept(ForEachOps.java:184) ~[na:na]
	at java.base/java.util.stream.SortedOps$SizedRefSortingSink.end(SortedOps.java:357) ~[na:na]
	at java.base/java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.copyInto(AbstractPipeline.java:510) ~[na:na]
	at java.base/java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.wrapAndCopyInto(AbstractPipeline.java:499) ~[na:na]
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachOp.evaluateSequential(ForEachOps.java:151) ~[na:na]
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachOp$OfRef.evaluateSequential(ForEachOps.java:174) ~[na:na]
	at java.base/java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.evaluate(AbstractPipeline.java:234) ~[na:na]
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline.forEach(ReferencePipeline.java:596) ~[na:na]
	at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.callRunners(SpringApplication.java:776) ~[spring-boot-4.0.8.jar:4.0.8]
	at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.run(SpringApplication.java:328) ~[spring-boot-4.0.8.jar:4.0.8]
	at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.run(SpringApplication.java:1365) ~[spring-boot-4.0.8.jar:4.0.8]
	at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.run(SpringApplication.java:1354) ~[spring-boot-4.0.8.jar:4.0.8]
	at example.MyApp.main(MyApp.java:31) ~[classes/:na]

In this case, I was specifying -c 0 while that option has @Min(1).
I would expect in some way to get the contents of the validation error message, as specified on the @Min annotation. Or, more generically, the error message supplied by the validator (in case custom error messages are built by my custom validator).

Asking AI, it suggests a quite complex customization through either CommandCatalogCustomizer or CommandExceptionResolver, which anyway requires to unwrap and inspect the ConstraintViolationException. Isn't there a built-in way to do this?
The default behavior I'm seeing seems to fully defeat the purpose of using the Bean Validation API.

Also suppressing the full stack trace would be nice, however, at least seeing the actual message (even if buried in the stack trace) would be better than nothing. What I'm trying to do is to write a command-line interface fro my Spring Boot app. Thanks!

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