github.com/containers/podman ↗

About containers/podman

Podman is a command-line tool for managing containers, images, volumes, and pods on Linux, with experimental support for Mac and Windows through virtual machines. It implements the Open Container Initiative (OCI) standard and provides a Docker-compatible CLI interface, making it useful for users familiar with Docker who want an alternative without a background daemon process.

The project is built on libpod, a Go library for container lifecycle management that handles everything from pulling and building images to running containers, managing networking via Netavark, and supporting both privileged and rootless (non-root) execution. Podman supports full container lifecycle operations including creation, checkpointing via CRIU, and removal, as well as pod management where groups of containers share resources. It offers a REST API that provides both Docker-compatible endpoints and Podman-specific advanced features.

Podman integrates with the broader containers ecosystem, using specialized projects like Buildah for image building, Skopeo for image pushing, and CRI-O for Kubernetes container runtime support. The project maintains a structured release schedule with major or minor versions four times yearly and follows a modular architecture that allows users to run containers with minimal privileges. Podman Desktop provides a graphical user interface for local development across Linux, Windows, and Mac systems.