I think there's a problem with the way Smolder understands paths in archive files.
If I run my prove command inside my application's root directory and upload that TAP archive to Smolder, I get pass and fail counts. So this works: prove -Iapp -v --merge --archive my_test_run.tar.gz The meta.yml file in that archive contains relative paths to the TAP output files. The following does not work, although the content of the TAP output files is identical. prove -I/mnt/ebs/home/users/amirib/sandbox/app -v --merge --archive /mnt/ebs/home/users/amirib/sandbox/t/archives/2010-02-06.tar.gz /mnt/ebs/home/users/amirib/sandbox/t This command latter produces a TAP archive with a full directory tree inside. The contents are thus: meta.yml mnt/ (with subdirs going all the way to t/) The meta.yml contains: --- file_attributes: - description: '/mnt/ebs/home/users/amirib/sandbox/t/01_class_sanity.t' end_time: 1265520534.63714 start_time: 1265520534.28689 - description: '/mnt/ebs/home/users/amirib/sandbox/t/02_register_noncoppa.t' end_time: 1265520538.78068 start_time: 1265520534.64297 file_order: - '/mnt/ebs/home/users/amirib/sandbox/t/01_class_sanity.t' - '/mnt/ebs/home/users/amirib/sandbox/t/02_register_noncoppa.t' start_time: 1265520534 stop_time: 1265520538 See the absolute paths? Those files are actually the test files, not the TAP output! If I change the contents of that file to use './mnt...', i.e., to reference the ./mnt directory in the archive file relatively, tar that back up, and upload that to Smolder, I get pass and fail counts. If I delete meta.yml entirely and tar up only the mnt/ directory, that works as well. Amiri