Arguments in parent command are not accepted when subcommand is present

[juraj-hrivnak]

When running the parentcommand with any argument: $ ./tool parent arg, the command is not run, but the help message is printed instead.

If we comment out the this.subcommands(Subcommand()) this starts to work properly.

Using $ ./tool parent arg subcommand for some reason accepts the argument. That is weird because allowInterspersedArgs is set to falseby default.

Source code:

class Subcommand : CliktCommand()
{
    override fun run() = Unit
}

class Parent : CliktCommand()
{
    private val args: List<String> by argument("arguments").multiple()
    override fun run() = Unit

    init
    {
        this.subcommands(Subcommand())
    }
}

Note that I tried both the latest & latest snapshot versions.

[ajalt]

Thanks for the clear reproduction.

This is by design; you can't specify parent arguments after a subcommand because it would lead to ambiguity if the subcommand also had any arguments. arg subcommand is fine because the argument occurs before the subcommand. allowInterspersedArgs only affects arguments and options, not subcommands.

[juraj-hrivnak]

I see, that makes sense. The issue is that the argument doesn’t work when the subcommand is not used but registered under the parent command.

[ajalt]

You need to enable running the parent without children

[juraj-hrivnak]

So that was the trick! Thank you,