ArgGroup validation: inconsistent behaviour (4.0.4, #807)

[deining]

To me, it looks like there is still an issue concerning #807:

import picocli.CommandLine;
import picocli.CommandLine.ArgGroup;
import picocli.CommandLine.Option;

public class ArgTest implements Runnable {

    @ArgGroup(validate = false, exclusive = true, heading = "%nGlobal options:%n")
    protected GlobalOptions globalOptions = new GlobalOptions();

    static class GlobalOptions {
        @Option(names = "-s", description = "ssss", required = true)
        boolean slowClock = false;

        @Option(names = "-v", description = "vvvv", required = false)
        boolean verbose = false;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        new CommandLine(new ArgTest()).execute(args);
    }

    @Override
    public void run() {
    }
}

When running this code, the programs exits silently, as expected.

Now I'm settings required = true for the second option -v:

@Option(names = "-v", description = "vvvv", required = true)

When running the program after this code change, an error message is printed:

Error: -s, -v are mutually exclusive (specify only one)
Usage: <main class> -sv

Global options:
  -s     ssss
  -v     vvvv

Is this the intended behaviour?

[remkop]

Thank you for raising this! I am still looking at this...

One additional problem I found with the example you raised is that if -v and -s are exclusive and both required, and the end user specifies -s -v on the command line, then the GlobalOptions instance gets created twice: once when the -s argument is matched, and another time when -v is matched. The application would not see both slowClock and verbose being true...

So perhaps exclusive should always be false when validate is false... Still thinking about this.

[remkop]

Thanks again for raising this!

I finally got around to fixing this. I fixed both the validation, and also created and implemented #833 to enforce that ArgGroups with validate=false are automatically changed to be non-exclusive.