Usability issue with CliktCommand.findOrSetObject() being lazy

When in the main command’s constructor doing something like

init {
    findOrSetObject {
        loadConfig() // Return a populated OrtConfiguration object.
    }
}

without any further access of the object, and in the sub-command initializing a member property like

private val config by requireObject<OrtConfiguration>()

this results in a KotlinNullPointerException. The reason is that CliktCommand.findOrSetObject() does not actually store the object in the context until it’s read for the first time.

While I was able to work around this by calling the underlying Context.findOrSetObject() directly in the main command’s run() like

override fun run() {
    context.findOrSetObject { loadConfig() }
}

maybe there is a way to avoid API misuse like this altogether?

[ajalt]

Yes. If you want to set the object eagerly, you should call the function on the context.

[ajalt]

I updated the documentation to mention that the property delegate is lazy, so hopefully this will reduce confusion in the future.

@ppslim Thanks for the input! I’m not a fan of to declaring an unused property just to cause some side effects. I think it’s more clear to call the function on your context directly, so I’d rather not add an eager parameter to findOrSetObject .