CLI

10 min read

Provium's CLI surface is the single binary provium. By default it discovers *.test.lua files under the given paths and runs them; subcommands cover REPL, fixture management, and listing.

Synopsis #

provium [PATHS]... [FLAGS]
provium prepare [PROFILE]
provium repl <PROFILE> [--name <NAME>] [--fixture <PATH>]
provium console <PROFILE> [--mem <BYTES>] [--cpus <N>] [--cmdline <TEXT>] [--agent] [--qemu <PATH>] [--print-command] [-- QEMU_ARG...]
provium fixture list
provium fixture build <PATH>
provium fixture rebuild <PATH>
provium fixture clean
provium fixture stale
provium list [--fixtures]
provium lsp-setup [DIR] [--force]

If no paths are given, the current directory is scanned recursively.

Top-level flags #

Discovery and selection #

VMM and resources #

Lifecycle #

Output #

Observability #

Subcommands #

When a subcommand is given, the test-runner mode is suppressed.

provium prepare [PROFILE] #

Run dynamic profiles' build commands without booting anything. With a PROFILE argument, builds just that profile (and errors with provium prepare: profile \` not found in provium.tomlif it isn't declared); with no argument, builds every profile that declares abuild` command, in name order, stopping at the first failure.

Use it to pre-warm artifacts — provium prepare && provium --no-build builds once, then runs the suite without rebuilding — or to drive an image build from a machine that isn't a test host: prepare skips the pre-flight checks (/dev/kvm, iproute2, CAP_NET_ADMIN), so it runs anywhere sh and the builder do.

A profile with no build command is a silent no-op. A build that exits non-zero aborts with the profile name and exit status, and Provium never falls through to using whatever stale artifacts are on disk.

provium repl <PROFILE> [--name <NAME>] [--fixture <PATH>] #

Boot a VM and drop into an interactive Lua REPL against it.

If --fixture is set without a profile arg, the first profile in provium.toml (sorted by name) is used.

provium console <PROFILE> [flags] [-- QEMU_ARG...] #

Boot a profile's VM and attach your terminal to its serial console — no agent, no Lua. Ctrl-A X quits QEMU; Ctrl-A C toggles the QEMU monitor.

Anything after -- is passed verbatim to QEMU.

provium fixture list #

Show every cached entry with size and key.

provium fixture build <PATH> #

Force a build for the named fixture (test-root-relative path, no .fixture.lua suffix). If the fixture is already cached, prints already built: <path> and exits.

provium fixture rebuild <PATH> #

Evict the existing cache entry and rebuild. Both single-VM (.snap) and lab (.lab/) layouts are evicted.

provium fixture clean #

Wipe the entire cache directory.

provium fixture stale #

List .fixture.lua files whose source hash (folded with kernel + initrd identifiers and any external host-file deps declared via vm:push_file / lab:depends_on_file) doesn't correspond to any cached entry. Useful for "what would provium rebuild on the next run?"

provium list [--fixtures] #

List discovered tests (default) or fixtures (--fixtures) without running anything. Useful for piping into xargs or for CI dry-runs.

provium lsp-setup [DIR] [--force] #

Drop Lua Language Server definitions into a test directory so test, provium, wait_until, json, and the rest of the harness globals stop showing up as undefined in your editor.

Writes:

• <DIR>/.provium-meta/types.lua — ---@meta stubs covering the test framework, the TestContext (t:assert_eq, t:fail, …), the root Lab, and the json global. Less-trafficked methods are typed as any — the goal is silencing diagnostics, not full IDE intellisense.
• <DIR>/.luarc.json — config pointing the LSP at .provium-meta/.

DIR defaults to the current directory. If .luarc.json already exists, the command refuses to overwrite and prints the snippet to merge in by hand; pass --force to replace it.

Skips pre-flight checks (/dev/kvm, iproute2, nft) so it runs cleanly on machines without test prerequisites — useful from a dev laptop separate from the test host.

After running, reload your editor's Lua server. To extend the types further (e.g. richer completion on a specific userdata you use a lot), edit .provium-meta/types.lua directly.

Exit codes #

The exit code is intentionally clamped to 0/1/2 rather than reflecting the number of failed files, so shell scripts don't have to worry about overflow at the 256-file mark or accidentally interpret failed_count == 2 as the internal-error sentinel.

Environment variables #

Output shape #

Plain text (default) #

PASS tests/smoke.test.lua (3 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped)
FAIL tests/networking/partition.test.lua (2 passed, 1 failed, 0 skipped)
    FAIL split-brain
        client A could not reach client B after partition
TIME tests/long.test.lua (1 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped)

3 file(s); 6 passed, 1 failed, 0 skipped; 12.34s

-v adds PASS <name> / SKIP <name> lines for each test. -q suppresses everything except the file-status line for files with failures and the summary.

JSON (--json) #

One object per file, line-delimited. Schema:

{
  "path": "tests/smoke.test.lua",
  "timeout": "in_time",
  "passed": true,
  "chunk_error": null,
  "tests": [
    {"name": "boots", "status": "passed", "message": null, "log": []},
    {"name": "fails", "status": "failed", "message": "1 ~= 2", "log": []}
  ]
}

status is one of "passed", "failed", "skipped". timeout is "in_time" or "timed_out".

Msgpack events (--events-stdout) #

Length-prefixed msgpack frames, one per EventFrame (see events). When --events-stdout is set, the human-readable / JSON renderer redirects to stderr so consumers piping provium --events-stdout | provium-coverage don't see human text interleaved into their msgpack parser.

Filter precedence #

Multiple selection flags compose:

1. Discovery: walk <paths> for *.test.lua files.
2. --filter substring match against test-root-relative path.
3. --rerun-failed intersect with the prior failed set (zero-result clean exit if no prior state).
4. --since mtime newer than the reference path.
5. Per-test (within each file): meta.skip → instant skip.
6. Per-test: meta.slow and --include-slow.
7. Per-test: --no-tag (skip if any match).
8. Per-test: --tag (run if any match).
9. Per-test: --no-tag-meta KEY=VALUE (skip if meta[KEY] contains VALUE).
10. Per-test: --tag-meta KEY=VALUE (run if all KEYs have at least one matching VALUE).

--watch mode rediscovers from scratch every iteration; --rerun-failed is automatically dropped under --watch so file-edit detection works as expected.

See also #

• provium.toml reference — config-file fields.
• Events — wire format of the msgpack event stream.
• Running tests — patterns for the CLI.

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