On quadlets
published on 2023/09/26
Podman introduced support for quadlets in version 4.4 and it’s a simpler way of letting systemd manage your containers. There was an option in the past to have podman generate systemd unit files, but those were unwieldy and full of podman command line options inside a unit file. These unit files weren’t easy to edit or even parse with eyeballs.
There’s no denying that docker-compose is an awesome tool. You specify the desired outcome, tell it to bring up containers, and it gets containers into the state you specified. It handles volumes, networks, and complicated configuration without a lot of legwork. The YAML files are pretty easy to read, too.
However, as with watchtower, that’s another external dependency.
My container deployments are often done at instance boot time and I don’t make too many changes afterwards. I found myself using docker-compose for the initial deployment and then I didn’t really use it again.
Why not remove it entirely and use what’s built into CoreOS already?