beeware / beeware/briefcase

Allow using podman as an alternative building backend

Open
#535 7 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
enhancement linux
Dominant language
Python
Stars
3.3k
Forks
549
Avg merge
1d 4h
Merged PRs (30d)
40

Description

**Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.**
Briefcase is currently using Docker as its building backend in Linux. This requires Docker to be installed and **callable in non-root environment**, which can be achieved by adding users to `docker` group. But as is mentioned in Docker's documentation, this operation **grants privileges equivalent to the root user to normal user**. Although Docker does provide an experimental rootless mode, `podman` seems to be more stable, and is adopted by distributions like Fedora as the replacement to Docker.

(However most developers don't use a multi-user machine so this issue seems to be superfluous lolol)

**Describe the solution you'd like**
On the website of podman, it says `alias docker=podman`. I hope implementing it won't be difficult.

**Describe alternatives you've considered**
[Rootless Docker](https://docs.docker.com/engine/security/rootless/)

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

No file or test is named in the issue. Start by locating Briefcase’s Linux build backend and the existing Docker command path; compare Podman’s compatibility there, with done defined as supporting Podman as an alternative without breaking Docker builds.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
docker, linux, python
Domain
build-system, devops, operating-systems
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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