containers / containers/podman.io

Confirm runc support / update installation docs

Open
#365 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Dominant language
TypeScript
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108
Forks
188
Avg merge
6d 22h
Merged PRs (30d)
12

Description

### TL;DR

Podman [installation documentation] indicates that both `crun` and `runc` are supported, but some PRs closed in 2024 ([PR#22706], [PR#23020]) indicate support for `runc` was dropped, and the release note was never propagated to any release.

---
### Details

Having recently submitted a PR to update some documentation in Podman which resulted in some Cirrus CI failures ([PR#25111]), I wanted to get a better understanding of the tests. I had been linked to the [`.cirrus.yml`] file and I was skimming it when my eyes were immediately drawn to [the following line]:

```yml
CI_DESIRED_RUNTIME: crun # As of 2024-05-28 there are no other supported runtimes
```

I was mildly horrified to see this, as I had just submitted (and had approved and merged!) my first podman.io PR a few days ago ([PR#363]), and one of the items on my PR was to switch FROM `crun` to `runc` when installing Podman from source on Debian, due to an error I ran into doing so (_`crun unknown version specified`_). I turned on Blame so I could figure out what was going on and found the following PRs removing runc support:

* https://github.com/containers/podman/pull/22706
* https://github.com/containers/podman/pull/23020

[PR#22706] has the following release note in the body:

> Podman no longer supports runc nor cgroups v1

However, I checked every Release after the date that was merged, and all of the tags linked to the commit, and I could not find any evidence of this release note making it "public".

---
### What to do?

In conclusion, this issue is to track whether or not Podman supports `runc`, and if not, track the need to update the [installation documentation] (I am willing to take this on, if not just to correct my "mistake"). I am guessing there will need to be a corresponding issue in Podman, as I see `runc` all over it (I am definitely not the best person for this task).

[installation documentation]: https://podman.io/docs/installation#crun--runc
[PR#22706]: https://github.com/containers/podman/pull/22706
[PR#23020]: https://github.com/containers/podman/pull/23020
[PR#25111]: https://github.com/containers/podman/pull/25111
[`.cirrus.yml`]: https://github.com/containers/podman/blob/main/.cirrus.yml
[the following line]: https://github.com/containers/podman/blob/6ee51c5e4fcc17b86388dba2bcd05b9f0f18b80d/.cirrus.yml#L61
[PR#363]: https://github.com/containers/podman.io/pull/363

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Research direction

Start with .cirrus.yml and the linked PRs #22706 and #23020 to verify the current runc and crun support status. Then compare that finding with the installation documentation at the linked crun--runc section; done means the documented support and any relevant release information match the confirmed project behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
devops, documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
30/100

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