Installation

This is an instruction how to build and start Kafka Command Line Tool (hereinafter - Shell). The implementation is in progress under KAFKA-1694.

To start Shell you need to have a running Kafka Cluster built from the given patch (attached under KAFKA-1694) and build the Shell itself.

1. Get the code.
   Get the latest patch attached to KAFKA-1694.
   The patch was built against trunk, on top of revision 01f20e0 (for patch KAFKA-1694_2015-03-12_13:04:37.patch). So reset to this commit and then run to apply the patch:

   git am KAFKA-1694_latest.patch

   


2. Build the code. Run:

   ./gradlew releaseTarGz

   


3. Start somewhere Kafka Cluster from archive under ./core/build/distributions/kafka_2.10-0.8.3-SNAPSHOT.tgz


4. Unpack build archive and start Shell:
   #cd <kafka_home>/core/build/distributions/ && rm -rf kafka_2.10-0.8.3-SNAPSHOT && tar -xf kafka_2.10-0.8.3-SNAPSHOT.tgz
   
   
5. Start the Shell:
   sudo <kafka_home>/core/build/distributions/kafka_2.10-0.8.3-SNAPSHOT/bin/kafka.sh --shell --broker <host : port>
   Where <host : port> is location of one of the running brokers from the Cluster.
   
   
6. To get Shell help run:
   sudo <kafka_home>/core/build/distributions/kafka_2.10-0.8.3-SNAPSHOT/bin/kafka.sh --help

Sample usage

You can use Kafka Command Line Tool in two ways: 1) as a interactive shell 2) as a simple CLI.

E.g. to get list of topics you can:

1) Start Shell and run:

sudo bin/kafka.sh --shell --broker <host : port>

kafka> list-topics

Or

2) Run right from kafka.sh:

sudo bin/kafka.sh --list-topics --broker <host : port>