Key Concepts

Project: A "Plain Old Java Project" hosted in GitHub or GitLab. Projects are registered with the CLI so that a simple name can refer to them.

For example, if you register the GitHub URL of a project that uses Spring Data JPA under the name ‘jpa’, you can create a new project from that one by invoking the command boot new my-jpa-app jpa. Similarly, you can add JPA functionality to an existing project by invoking the command boot add jpa.

The commands related to projects are project list, project add and project remove

Project Catalog: The Project Catalog is a collection of projects that share a common theme.

After registering a catalog with the CLI, the projects are readily available for the user when using the boot new and boot add commands. The catalog is a YAML file with the name project-catalog.yaml. It contains a list of project repository URLs, and an associated name. The catalog is hosted on GitHub or GitLab

The commands related to project catalogs are catalog list, catalog add and catalog remove

Commands: These are declaratively defined commands that let you add or modify code and configuration files.

You can also run arbitrary executables to help solve any arbitrary task commonly occurring in your development workflow. User-defined commands are integrated into the CLI and appear the same as the built-in commands.

The user-defined command has three parts, the command name, the sub-command name, and the `options. The command name and sub-command name are defined using a directory structure convention.

As an example, to create a new user-defined command, with a command name of controller and a sub-command name of new, make the following directory structure

In this directory, you can have one file named command.yaml that defines the command’s description, options, and default values. Also in this directory or subdirectories are action files that define the actions to take on the project.

Action Files

Roles in your CLI provide a way to organize and reuse variables across user-defined commands.

The Spring CLI includes a default, unnamed role that is always present. Additionally, roles can be associated with specific names to further differentiate their purpose and usage. These roles are stored as YAML files within the .spring/roles directory, which is located alongside the .spring/commands directory.

These roles allow you to define variables that are accessible in an Action File, providing a way to share data between commands.

Additionally, roles can be used to supply values for command line options. If a command line option does not have a value specified, and there is a role variable with the same name as the command option, the command will utilize the value of the role variable for that specific command option.

Some of the commands related to projects are role add, role remove and role set