Command line handling for Java options (-D)

General Discussion
1

I have a generic command line that I build in order to support deployment. This includes additional command line options via -D<parameter>=<value>, which is causing some issues since the behavior differs for the available commands.

Tested against
Liquibase Version: 4.29.2

These all work;

liquibase update -Dproperty1=value1
liquibase rollbackcount 1 -Dproperty1=value1
liquibase changelog-sync -Dproperty1=value1

These do not work;

liquibase clear-checksums -Dproperty1=value1
liquibase release-locks -Dproperty1=value1

Error returned;

Unexpected argument(s): -Dproperty1=value1
For detailed help, try 'liquibase --help' or 'liquibase <command-name> --help'

Is this expected behavior? Whilst I understand that the additional options being provided here are not applicable for both release-locks and clear-checksums, would it not be better to ignore them rather raise an error with “Unexpected argument{s)”?

Test scripts

liquibase.properties

classpath: .
driver: com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver
url: jdbc:sqlserver://localhost:1433;databaseName=test;integratedSecurity=true;encrypt=true;trustServerCertificate=true
logLevel: info
changeLogFile: root.xml

root.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<databaseChangeLog
  xmlns="http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/dbchangelog"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/dbchangelog
                      http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/dbchangelog/dbchangelog-3.8.xsd">

  <changeSet author="x" id="1" runOnChange="true">
    <sql>
      drop synonym if exists synonym1;
      CREATE SYNONYM synonym1 FOR [${property1}].[dbo].[TEST1]
    </sql>
    <rollback>
    </rollback>
  </changeSet>

  <changeSet author="x" id="2" runOnChange="true">
    <sql>
      drop synonym if exists synonym2;
    </sql>
    <sqlFile
      path="synonym2.sql"/>
    <rollback>
    </rollback>
  </changeSet>
</databaseChangeLog>

synonym2.sql

CREATE SYNONYM synonym2 FOR [${property1}].[dbo].[TEST2];

`

2

Currently, Liquibase does not support Java system property-style arguments for all commands. I think this would make a very good feature request, if you would like to submit a PR for that.

You can workaround this limitation by specifying your system properties in the JAVA_OPTS environment variable.