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Clikt (pronounced “clicked”) is a multiplatform Kotlin library that makes writing command line interfaces simple and intuitive. It’s the “Command Line Interface for Kotlin”.

It is designed to make the process of writing command line tools effortless while supporting a wide variety of use cases and allowing advanced customization when needed.

Clikt has:

  • arbitrary nesting of commands
  • composable, type safe parameter values
  • generation of help output and shell autocomplete scripts
  • multiplatform packages for JVM, Node.js, and native Linux, Windows and macOS

What does it look like? Here’s a complete example of a simple Clikt program:

class Hello : CliktCommand() {
    val count: Int by option().int().default(1).help("Number of greetings")
    val name: String by option().prompt("Your name").help("The person to greet")

    override fun run() {
        repeat(count) {
            echo("Hello $name!")
        }
    }
}

fun main(args: Array<String>) = Hello().main(args)

And here’s what it looks like when run:

The help page is generated for you:

Errors are also taken care of:

Installation

Clikt is distributed through Maven Central.

dependencies {
   implementation("com.github.ajalt.clikt:clikt:5.0.1")

   // optional support for rendering markdown in help messages
   implementation("com.github.ajalt.clikt:clikt-markdown:5.0.1")
}

There is also a smaller core module available. See the docs for details.

If you’re using Maven instead of Gradle, use <artifactId>clikt-jvm</artifactId>

Multiplatform

Clikt supports most multiplatform targets. See the docs for more information about functionality supported on each target. You’ll need to use Gradle 6 or newer.

Snapshots

Snapshot builds are also available

You'll need to add the Sonatype snapshots repository: 

repositories {
    maven {
        url = uri("https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/")
    }
}

API Reference