Command Line Interface

The Command Line Interface

Gwen is designed to do everything on the command line. In this way:

• You have direct access to all launch options
• It is consistent across platforms
• It is very simple to use
• A GUI is not necessary
• Convenience scripts can easily be written

Launch Options

The easiest way to see what launch options are available is to open a command prompt and launch Gwen with the --help option.

• If you do not have the bin directory of your installed Gwen engine on your system path
  • Open a command prompt and navigate to the bin directory
• If you do
• Then you can launch Gwen from any directory

When you're ready, launch the following command:

gwen --help

The following output will be displayed:

Usage: gwen [options] [<features>]

  [options]
  --version
        Prints the implementation version
  --help
        Prints this usage text
  -b | --batch
        Batch/server mode
  --parallel
        Run features or scenarios in parallel depending on state level
  --parallel-features
        Run features in parallel regardless of state level
  -p <properties files> | --properties <properties files>
        Comma separated list of properties file paths
  -r <report directory> | --report <report directory>
        Evaluation report output directory
  -f <formats> | --formats <formats>
        Comma separated list of report formats to produce
         - Supported formats include: html,junit,json (default is html)
  -t <tags> | --tags <tags>
        Comma separated list of @include or ~@exclude tags
  -n | --dry-run
        Do not evaluate steps on engine (validate for correctness only)
  -i <input data file> | --input-data <input data file>
        Input data (CSV file with column headers)
  -m <meta files> | --meta <meta files>
        Comma separated list of meta files and directories

  [<features>]
       Space separated list of feature files and/or directories

If you get stuck, there are several launch examples on our FAQ.

Java Options

In addition to the above launch options, you can also pass Java arguments to the Java process that launches and runs Gwen itself. This is useful for setting system properties and tweaking JVM options.

Supported Java arguments include:

• -D
  • For setting system properties
• -J<OPTION>
  • For setting other Java options
  • The -J prefix is stripped and OPTION is appended to the JAVA_OPTS environment variable