SOLR-18468: Rename --prompt-inputs to --script-inputs

[serhiy-bzhezytskyy]

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SOLR-18468

Description

--prompt-inputs is already documented in deployment-guide/solr-control-script-reference.adoc -- it was added in the same PR that introduced the feature (#4127, merged 2026-02-18), including a usage example and a note about quoting on Windows. Checked guide/solr/latest directly: it's Solr 10.0 and doesn't have it yet, so that's a publishing lag, not a documentation gap -- it'll show up once a release picks up main.

On the rename: the overload is real. bin/solr already has three differently-shaped --prompt* flags on one script:

• --prompt <true|false> under auth enable -- a boolean, whether to prompt for credentials
• --no-prompt under start -e -- skip the interactive session, use defaults
• --prompt-inputs <values> under start -e -- skip the interactive session, use these values instead

Solution

Renamed --prompt-inputs to --script-inputs. Considered four options:

• --example-inputs -- rejected. -e/--example <name> already means "which built-in example to run" (cloud, techproducts, schemaless, films), so --example-inputs reads as input about the example, not answers to a prompt. Trades one overload for another.
• --answers <values> -- workable, no collisions, but doesn't tie to any existing term in the guide.
• --session-inputs <values> -- the first version of this PR, replaced after review.
• --script-inputs <values> -- picked. The guide calls bin/solr the Solr Control Script and run_example already takes --script for the path to it, so the flag reads as the inputs for the script. The name is unused on main, doesn't collide with -e, --prompt or --no-prompt, and can be reused by other bin/solr tools later.

Didn't touch --no-prompt, even though it has the same --prompt* collision shape: it dates to 2014 (SOLR-3617), a decade in every release, versus --prompt-inputs's 7 months entirely unreleased. Renaming it would be a real breaking change for a widely-used flag, and that's a separate call from this ticket.

Clean rename, no deprecated alias -- --prompt-inputs has never shipped in a release, so there's no compatibility cost to weigh against the simplicity.

Full sweep, not just the flag name: RunExampleTool.java (option constant, the usingScriptInputs field, the CloudExampleParams record component, the mutual-exclusivity error message), bin/solr and bin/solr.cmd (help text, arg parsing and the :set_script_inputs label), TestSolrCLIRunExample.java (test name, variables, assertion message), the ref guide, and the still-unreleased changelog entry for #4127 (its title said --prompt-inputs; corrected since it hasn't shipped under that name).

Tests

./gradlew :solr:core:compileJava :solr:core:compileTestJava :solr:core:spotlessCheck -Pvalidation.errorprone=true is clean. TestSolrCLIRunExample passes (6 tests), including testSolrCloudExampleWithScriptInputs, which starts a real SolrCloud example through --script-inputs and checks the collection it creates. buildLocalAntoraSite and checkSiteLinks pass with no broken links; the only Antora messages are the six (five warnings and one table-row error, in configsets-api, rule-based-authorization-plugin and document-enrichment-with-llms) that #4922 (SOLR-18464) fixed on main after this branch was cut; this PR does not touch those pages. A search for the old names finds nothing.

AI-assisted (Claude Sonnet 5).

[serhiy-bzhezytskyy]

@epugh tagging you since this is under SOLR-18459/SOLR-18468, which you filed.

[epugh]

I've been struggling a lot on this one.... --session-inputs seems to generic... What about "--script-inputs"? I could potentially imagine that at some point in the future you could use something like that for multiple bin/solr tools, like the bin/solr package....

[serhiy-bzhezytskyy]

Switched to --script-inputs. The name is unused on main, run_example already takes --script for the path to bin/solr, and the guide calls it the Solr Control Script, so the flag reads as the inputs for the script and other bin/solr tools can reuse it. Renamed everywhere the old name appeared: the CLI option, bin/solr and bin/solr.cmd, the test, the guide page and the unreleased changelog entry. The description is updated to match.

[epugh]

This feature feels obsure enough (only landed in 10.0) that we don't actually need deprecation and backwards compat.... It's kind of a power user feature that honestly probably only @epugh knows about until we use it in more places ;-(.

[epugh]

Got lucky, it's a 10.1 feature, so going to merge it and hope we can get a backport.

[epugh]

Per dev@ thread, confirmed with RM @sigram I am backporting this to branch_10x and then branch_10_1!