The shell takes the following command line options

unix:>java -jar spring-cloud-dataflow-shell-1.2.1.RELEASE.jar --help
Data Flow Options:
  --dataflow.uri=<uri>                              Address of the Data Flow Server [default: http://localhost:9393].
  --dataflow.username=<USER>                        Username of the Data Flow Server [no default].
  --dataflow.password=<PASSWORD>                    Password of the Data Flow Server [no default].
  --dataflow.credentials-provider-command=<COMMAND> Executes an external command which must return an OAuth Access Token [no default].
  --dataflow.skip-ssl-validation=<true|false>       Accept any SSL certificate (even self-signed) [default: no].
  --spring.shell.historySize=<SIZE>                 Default size of the shell log file [default: 3000].
  --spring.shell.commandFile=<FILE>                 Data Flow Shell executes commands read from the file(s) and then exits.
  --help                                            This message.

The spring.shell.commandFile option is of note, as it can be used to point to an existing file which contains all the shell commands to deploy one or many related streams and tasks. This is useful when creating some scripts to help automate the deployment.

There is also a shell command

dataflow:>script --file <YOUR_AWESOME_SCRIPT>

This is useful to help modularize a complex script into multiple indepenent files.