Podman Desktop blog! | Podman Desktop
In the world of modern software development, containers and Kubernetes are no longer optional; they are essential. That’s where Podman Desktop comes in, your ultimate tool for building, managing, and deploying containers and Kubernetes clusters with ease and confidence. In this blogpost we will walk through a typical development workflow, creating and building a container and then testing it in a local Kubernetes cluster. Let’s dive in.
Building an Application with Podman Desktop
First, let's start by building an application in a container with Podman Desktop. We need our application code and a Containerfile. For a simple application, your Containerfile might look something like:
To enhance security, we utilize the nginx-unprivileged image. This helps avoid root access, which is enforced by default in some Kubernetes distributions like OpenShift. The default NGINX image uses port 80, which is forbidden in rootless mode.
After building your image, you can immediately run it with a single click, and your container will appear in the "Containers" list.
Now that our webserver container is running we can inspect it in the UI
We can click the Open Browser button to see the webserver in our browser:
Inspecting Container Logs with Podman Desktop
Monitoring container logs is crucial for debugging and understanding application behavior. Let's use Podman Desktop to view the logs of the newly created container.
Transitioning to Production with Kubernetes Cluster
Now that we have a development setup up and running, it’s time to get ready for production. In today's world, it is natural for us to move to Kubernetes. Having a locally running cluster, we are able to iterate quickly but still have an environment that is as close to production as possible. This aids in a smoother migration in the future. Podman Desktop is here to help you test and execute that migration.
With kind or minikube, we are able to have a locally running Kubernetes cluster in minutes. This will allow us to test our application in a Kubernetes environment. Kind comes installed together with Podman Desktop so you will be able to get started instantly.
We now have a locally running Kubernetes cluster which we can explore on the Kubernetes dashboard.
Deploying to Kubernetes Cluster
With a running Kubernetes cluster, we can now create our pod in the Kubernetes cluster. Using Podman Desktop, we can convert our previously created container into a Pod in our kind cluster.
First we have to push our image to our kind cluster.
Now that the image is available we can use the Podman Desktop UI to Deploy our container to a Pod
Visualizing Kubernetes Events and Logs
The conversion from containers to Kubernetes manifests is particularly valuable, eliminating the need to manually write YAML files for simple deployments. Podman Desktop adds imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent to the generated Kubernetes YAML. This ensures that we use the image that we just pushed to the cluster is also the one we will use. Make sure to add this to your Kubernetes YAML or use a specific tag on your image to avoid the default pull policy (Always).
Understanding what's happening in your Kubernetes cluster is essential for effective development. In the latest version of Podman Desktop, you can now check the events of your Kubernetes Pods in the UI.
We can also check out the “Logs” tab to see the logs of the running Pod.
Enhancing Development with Podman Desktop
Podman Desktop significantly streamlines the container and Kubernetes development experience by providing tools that simplify your workflow and increase productivity. Whether you're just starting with containers or managing complex Kubernetes deployments, Podman Desktop offers tools that simplify your workflow and increase productivity. As a CNCF project, it continues to evolve with the needs of the cloud-native community, making it an increasingly valuable tool in any developer's toolkit.
Try Podman Desktop today and experience how it can transform your container, Kubernetes, and OpenShift workflows!
Podman Desktop 1.19 Release!
Podman Desktop 1.19 is now available. Click here to download it!
This release brings exciting new features and improvements, including many extension updates:
In this release, the latest Podman 5.5 version provides new features, bug fixes, and better stability while using the tool. You can find the full changelog of Podman 5.5 on their release page containers/podman/releases#v5.5.0.
