Use the CLI

ContainerHive's behavior can be controlled with various commands and flags.

You can get a full list by running

ch --help

Global Flags

Flag	Description
--project, -p	Project root directory
--build-id	Build ID appended to tags as +<id>

Commands

generate

Discover project and render configurations to dist/.

ch generate

This must run before build. It parses hive.yml and all image definitions.

build

Build container images with BuildKit.

ch build [image:tag patterns...]

Flag	Description
--registry	Enable local registry
--platform	Override platforms

You can filter which images to build by passing image:tag patterns as arguments. In CI environments, the registry is auto-enabled.

test

Run container structure tests on built images.

ch test [image:tag patterns...]

Uses container-structure-test to validate built images against test definitions.

sbom

Generate Software Bill of Materials for built images.

ch sbom [image:tag patterns...]

Flag	Description
--platform	Override platforms

Generates CycloneDX JSON format SBOMs using Syft as a Go library. No external tooling required.

finalize

Create multi-arch manifests and semantic version alias tags.

ch finalize [image:tag patterns...]

Creates manifests from platform-specific images and applies semantic version alias tagging. Requires a running registry.

verify

Verify project structure.

ch verify

Validates hive.yml and image definitions. Useful as a quick check before building.

template ci

Generate CI pipeline configuration.

ch template ci --provider <provider> --output <path>

Flag	Description
--provider	CI provider (gitlab or github)
--output	Output file path
--template-dir	Custom template directory
--artifacts	Enable artifact passing
--version	ContainerHive version override
--image-name	ContainerHive image name

template custom

Render custom Go templates with project context.

ch template custom --template <path.gotpl> --output <path>

wait

Wait for infrastructure dependencies to become available.

ch wait

Flag	Description
--buildkitd	Wait for BuildKit daemon
--docker-socket	Wait for Docker socket
--timeout	Timeout duration

login

Log in to a container registry.

ch login <registry> -u <username> -p <password>

Flag	Description
--username, -u	Registry username
--password, -p	Registry password
--password-stdin	Read password from stdin

dev buildkitd

Manage a local BuildKit daemon container for development. See Local development for full details.

ch dev buildkitd start
ch dev buildkitd stop
ch dev buildkitd status
ch dev buildkitd logs

license

Show third-party license notices.

ch license