Usage

This tool performs various actions on CycloneDX SBOMs. The action is determined by the <command> argument.

usage: cdx-ev [--quiet] [--verbose] [--version] [--help] <command> ...

Global options

These options must be specified BEFORE <command>.

--quiet, -q

Disable logging output. This has no effect on regular command output to stdout or the --output or --report-format options.

Default: False

--verbose, -v

Enable verbose logging output. This has no effect on output to stdout or the --output or --report-format options.

Default: False

--version

Print version.

Commands

Determines the action to perform on the SBOM. Each command might have more options. To get help on command options, use cdx-ev <command> --help.

<command>

Possible choices: amend, merge, merge-vex, validate, set, build-public

Available commands

• amend
• build-public
• merge
• merge-vex
• set
• validate

Exit codes

As the tool should be used in CI/CD, it uses exit codes to indicate possible errors:

• 0 = Success

• 2 = Usage error, e.g., missing option, invalid argument, etc.

• 3 = Generic application error. This can have various reasons ranging from invalid input files to bugs in our code.

• 4 = [Only for validate] SBOM failed validation.

Output

Some commands produce a new SBOM as output. By default, this output will be written to stdout but it can be written to a file, using the command’s --output option.

If the --output option is specified and set to an existing or non-existing file, the output is written there. If it points to a directory, the output will be written to a file with an auto-generated name in that directory.

Attention

In both cases, existing files with the same name will be overwritten without warning.

The filename is generated according to the template <name>_<version>_<timestamp>.cdx.json, where:

• <name> is the name of the component in the SBOM’s metadata.

• <version> is the version of the component in the SBOM’s metadata.

• <timestamp> is the timestamp in the SBOM’s metadata or, if that doesn’t exist, the current time. Either is converted to UTC and formatted as YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.