Another subcommand named 'help' already exists for command '<main class>'

[Mikusch]

Hi there,

I keep running into the following exception
picocli.CommandLine$InitializationException: Another subcommand named 'help' already exists for command '<main class>'

I know what the cause of this is but I don't know how to fix it.

I have an abstract class AbstractCommand which is annotated so that every class extending it automatically has a specified (custom) help command:

@CommandLine.Command(subcommands = HelpCommand.class)
public abstract class AbstractCommand {
    ...
}

All my commands are extending this abstract class and this hasn't caused any issues thus far.

The problem arises when I make another abstract class extending AbstractCommand e.g.

public abstract class Subcommand extends AbstractCommand {
    ...
}

Now, when I call CommandSpec.forAnnotatedObject(MyCommand.class, factory), where MyCommand extends Subcommand, it will throw an exception telling me that it already has a help command. I couldn't find the exact cause for the issue in the picocli source code but I can only assume that it is trying to add the help command twice due to Subcommand inheriting the annotation on AbstractCommand.

I would like to add that this only occurs on version 4.0.0-alpha-2 and up, worked just fine before that.

Perhaps it is related to this?

[remkop]

I think it’s caused by this change: #660

[remkop]

May need to revert that.

[remkop]

This change has been included in the 4.0.0-beta-1b release that just came out.
I added a test but it would be good if you can confirm the problem no longer exists.