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Version: v3

Podman Support limitations

The odo dev command is able to work either on Podman or on a Kubernetes cluster.

The motivation behind the support for the Podman platform is to lower the learning curve for developers working on containerized applications, and to limit the physical resources necessary for development.

As a matter of fact, Podman is simpler to apprehend, install and maintain than a Kubernetes cluster, and can run with a minimal overhead on the developer machine.

Thanks to the support for the Kubernetes Pod abstraction by Podman, odo, and the user, can work on both Podman and Kubernetes on top of this abstraction.

The commands working on Podman are:

  • odo dev --platform podman

    This command will run the component in development mode on Podman. If you omit to use the --platform flag, odo dev works on cluster.

  • odo logs --platform podman

    This command will display the component's logs from Podman. If you omit to use the --platform flag, odo logs get the logs from cluster.

  • odo list component [--platform podman]

    This command without the --platform flag will list components from both the cluster and Podman. You can use the --platform flag to limit the search from a specific platform, either cluster or podman.

  • odo describe component [--platform podman]

    This command without the --platform flag will describe a component from both the cluster and Podman. You can use the --platform flag to limit the search from a specific platform, either cluster or podman.

  • odo delete component [--platform podman]

    This command without the --platform flag will delete components from both the cluster and Podman. You can use the --platform flag to limit the deletion from a specific platform, either cluster or podman.

Following is a list of limitations when odo is working on Podman.

Apply commands referencing Kubernetes or OpenShift Components are not supported​

A Devfile Apply command gives the possibility to "apply" any Kubernetes or OpenShift resource to the cluster. As Podman only supports a limited number of Kubernetes resources, Apply commands are not executed by odo when running on Podman.

Component listening on localhost not forwarded​

When working on a cluster, odo dev forwards ports from the developer's machine to the ports opened by the application. This port forwarding works when the application is listening either on localhost or on 0.0.0.0 address.

Podman is natively not able to port-forward to programs listening on localhost. In this situation, you may have two solutions:

  • you can change your application to listen on 0.0.0.0. This will be necessary for the ports giving access to the application or, in Production, this port would not be available (this port will most probably be exposed through an Ingress or a Route in Production, and these methods need the port to be bound to 0.0.0.0),
  • you can keep the port bound to localhost. This is the best choice for the Debug port, to restrict access to this Debug port. In this case, you can use the flag --forward-localhost when running odo dev on Podman. This way, you keep the Debug port secure on cluster.

Pre-Stop events not supported​

Pre-Stop events defined in the Devfile are not triggered when running odo dev on Podman.

Auto-mounting volumes​

Auto-mounting volumes is not supported when working on Podman.