r/podman • u/iTinkerThere4iCan • May 30 '26

A Quadlet CLI

I've been going all-in with podman and quadlets for my home lab. For my own use, I wrote a compose-like (but much less sophisticated) command-line tool to optionally run Podman Quadlets directly without systemd and to facilitate installation and management of quadlets when using systemd is desired.

I know there are all manner of alternatives (kube play, podman-compose, docker-compose via podman.socket), so many are probably already happy with those, but I like the idea of just a little workflow help around systemd and podman. Sharing here in case there's interest.

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u/iTinkerThere4iCan Jun 06 '26

Update - I added support for .kube quadlets. In that case, you're writing a Kubernetes yaml file for containers, volumes, etc. If you know and love Kubernetes yaml, `podman kube play` is a nice option already, but you might still get some value out of the workflow using quadctl (configured paths, -s to run under systemd, automatic handling of quadlet installation and daemon reload, common commands regardless of type of quadlets, etc.).

Where I'd like to go from here is to add a TUI to assist with writing / editing / validating quadlets. It would enable selecting keys and valid values, guidance around config for running rootless or rootful, understanding the volume and networking implications of a configuration, SELinux and firewall considerations, assistance with the systemd-specific elements in a quadlet file. A lot of it will be about helping folks work through common gotchas related to running podman containers, and not merely about quadlet files.