[PDFBOX-2602] Enhance command line tools

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 1.8.8, 2.0.0
• Fix Version/s: 3.0.0 PDFBox
• Component/s: Utilities
• Assignee: Maruan Sahyoun
• Reporter: Maruan Sahyoun
• Created: 15/Jan/15 19:31
• Updated: 18/Aug/23 05:46
• Resolved: 14/Aug/23 05:33

Description

The command line tools shall be enhanced to have the same behavior across all tools.

From the discussion on the dev mailing list

• add an -h option to print the usage
• print the usage to System.err and use an exit code of 1 if there was an invalid command line parameter
• print messages on exceptions to System.err
• rethrow the exception so java can handle it if it will terminate afterwards anyway
• use an exit code of 1if rethrowing doesn't make sense

Additional input:
https://clig.dev/

Issue Links

• is related to: PDFBOX-5181 pdfbox-app doesn't run in a headless environment