arcbox-cli

Command-line interface for ArcBox.

Overview

This crate provides a thin command-line interface for ArcBox machine management and local integration helpers. Runtime and Docker API serving are handled by the separate arcbox-daemon binary.

Features

• Machine Management: Create and manage Linux VMs
• Runtime Migration: Import local workloads from Docker Desktop or OrbStack
• Daemon Lifecycle: Start/stop daemon process
• Docker Context Integration: Seamless switching between Docker and ArcBox
• Native Kubernetes Integration: Manage the ArcBox k3s cluster and bundled kubectl
• Boot Asset & DNS Helpers: Manage boot cache and resolver setup

Usage

# Machine (VM) operations
abctl machine create myvm
abctl machine start myvm
abctl machine list
abctl machine stop myvm

# Runtime migration
abctl migrate from orbstack --dry-run          # inspect the plan, change nothing
abctl migrate from orbstack --dry-run --json   # same plan, machine-readable
abctl migrate from docker-desktop
abctl migrate from orbstack --source-socket ~/.orbstack/run/docker.sock --yes
abctl migrate from orbstack --no-start         # recreate but leave stopped

# Daemon management
abctl daemon start              # Start daemon in background
abctl daemon stop               # Stop daemon
abctl info                      # System info
abctl version                   # Version info

# Docker context integration
abctl docker enable             # Set ArcBox as Docker context
abctl docker disable            # Reset to default context

# Native Kubernetes integration
abctl k8s start                  # Start the ArcBox Kubernetes cluster
abctl k8s enable                 # Install kubectl + add the ArcBox kube context
# Development contexts are not activated globally; select one with kubectl config use-context.
kubectl get nodes

# Run containers through Docker CLI
docker run hello-world

Output formats

--format is global but validated for the selected command before any command I/O. Unsupported json or quiet combinations exit nonzero instead of falling back to decorated text.

Read-only JSON schemas are available for doctor, top, disk usage, boot status, boot list, setup status, machine inspect, sandbox inspect, and, on macOS, dns status. Disk and boot sizes use raw *_bytes fields. For read-only commands, quiet output is limited to setup status, which prints installed, partial, or unknown.

Status exit codes are health contracts: doctor, dns status, boot status, and setup status exit nonzero when their report is unhealthy or incomplete. A check that could not be run is reported as unknown rather than failed — doctor counts it separately and setup status still exits zero, because a login-shell probe that times out says nothing about the integration itself. Drift the daemon repairs on its next start is likewise reported as a detail, not as an incomplete cache: boot status says so for a runtime binary missing its executable bit instead of asking for a re-download. If Docker is unavailable, disk usage keeps host image facts, sets runtime reclaimable fields to null, reports the query error, and exits nonzero.

Exit status

• 0: command succeeded.
• 1: an abctl operation or daemon connection failed.
• 2: command-line arguments were invalid.
• Remote commands (machine exec, sandbox run / exec, and claude) propagate the command's exit status; sandbox signal exits use the shell convention 128 + signal.

Configuration

Socket path resolution order:

1. ARCBOX_SOCKET environment variable
2. The active profile or ARCBOX_DATA_DIR layout (<data-dir>/run/docker.sock)

The production default is ~/.arcbox/run/docker.sock. DOCKER_HOST is honored by the Docker CLI, not by ArcBox's direct socket clients.

License

MIT OR Apache-2.0