VIP - Verified Installation of Posit

An open-source, extensible test suite that validates Posit Team deployments are installed correctly and functioning properly.

VIP uses BDD-style tests (pytest-bdd + Playwright) to verify Connect, Workbench, and Package Manager deployments. Results can be viewed from the command-line output or compiled into an HTML report.

Documentation: https://posit-dev.github.io/vip/

Quick start

uv tool install posit-vip
vip install
vip verify --connect-url https://connect.example.com --interactive-auth

Run VIP from your own workstation or a CI runner, not the Connect, Workbench, or Package Manager servers themselves: VIP checks the deployment the way a real client would (over the same URL, proxy, and TLS termination your users go through), and --interactive-auth opens a visible browser window that those servers typically don't have a display for. On a headless server, use --headless-auth or --api-auth instead (see below).

Reproducible install

uv tool install posit-vip resolves the newest versions each release allows. To install the exact set a release was tested against, pass that release's constraints file (attached to every GitHub release as constraints-<version>.txt):

uv tool install posit-vip \
  -c https://github.com/posit-dev/vip/releases/download/vX.Y.Z/constraints-X.Y.Z.txt

Replace X.Y.Z with the release you are installing (see the releases page).

For a fully pinned, batteries-included environment, use the container image, which installs from the committed uv.lock:

docker run --rm -v "$PWD/vip.toml:/app/vip.toml" ghcr.io/posit-dev/vip:latest

On a headless server (no display), use --headless-auth instead:

vip verify --config vip.toml --headless-auth

Run a specific test by name:

vip verify --connect-url https://connect.example.com --filter test_login

With a configuration file:

cp vip.toml.example vip.toml     # edit with your deployment details
vip verify --config vip.toml

Fast confidence check — skip the detailed/long-running checks:

vip verify --config vip.toml --basic

Uninstalling

To reverse what vip install (or just setup) did:

vip uninstall        # dry run; prints the full plan including any sudo command
vip uninstall --yes  # remove Playwright cache + manifest; prints the sudo command
                     # for any system packages so you can remove them yourself

uv tool uninstall posit-vip  # remove vip itself once you're done

vip uninstall only removes packages and files that vip install recorded in .vip-install.json; anything that was already on your machine before running vip install is left alone.

If a Connect URL is configured (in vip.toml or via --connect-url), vip uninstall chains vip cleanup first to remove _vip_test-tagged content from Connect.

CLI commands

Command	Description
vip verify	Run verification tests against a Posit Team deployment
vip status	Quick health check for each configured product
vip cleanup	Delete VIP _vip_test content from Connect
vip report	Render the HTML report from test results (requires Quarto CLI)
vip auth	Authentication tools (e.g. mint Connect API keys)
vip version	Print the vip version and the minimum supported Posit Team version
vip --version	Print the installed vip version

Run vip --help or vip <command> --help for full usage details.

CI / pipeline integration

VIP emits machine-readable output for security-ops and CI/CD pipelines.

vip verify always writes report/results.json (and report/failures.json on failures). Add JUnit XML and/or SARIF with --format:

vip verify --format json,junit,sarif
# report/results.json   (always)
# report/junit.xml       (--format junit)  -> CI test dashboards
# report/results.sarif   (--format sarif)  -> GitHub code scanning / secops

Skip messages in the JUnit and SARIF output carry the actual skip reason instead of a generic "skipped" label. results.json also records provenance for the run (VIP version, duration, Python version, platform, and whether the slow checks were excluded) so an archived report can be traced back to what produced it.

The --ci preset bundles all three formats with concise tracebacks (--tb=short) and overrides --format if both are given. Run it without --interactive-auth/ --headless-auth -- combining them is an error, since --ci is meant for non-interactive pipelines:

vip verify --ci

Container

An official image is published to ghcr.io/posit-dev/vip. The entrypoint is the vip CLI; the default subcommand is verify. Because docker run args replace the default command (they do not append to it), name the verify subcommand explicitly when passing verify flags:

# bare invocation runs `vip verify`:
docker run --rm -v "$PWD/vip.toml:/app/vip.toml" ghcr.io/posit-dev/vip
# CI preset (name the subcommand so args don't replace it):
docker run --rm -v "$PWD/vip.toml:/app/vip.toml" ghcr.io/posit-dev/vip verify --ci
# other subcommands are reachable too:
docker run --rm -v "$PWD/vip.toml:/app/vip.toml" ghcr.io/posit-dev/vip status --json

Development

See docs/development.md for dev setup, linting, and formatting.

For the test architecture and four-layer design, see docs/test-architecture.md.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.