podman-compose definitely got better over the past year…

But you can also use docker-compose itself with podman instead!

https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/podman-docker-compose

Basically, for system level containers, you can do:

sudo systemctl start podman.socket

(or enable --now instead of start if you want it to stick around after rebooting)

Then use docker-compose and it’ll communicate with podman instead of docker.

For user session “rootless” containers, it’s mainly the same thing, except you’ll need to remove sudo and then add --user after start or enable in that systemctl command. And you’d need to set an environment variable (either prefixing it on the command or using export to set it in your session), like this:

DOCKER_HOST=unix:///run/user/$UID/podman/podman

(Put that in front of the docker-compose command and it’ll connect to podman as your user instead, provided the service is available. Or toss it into your .bashrc with "export " before it and new bash sessions would have it.)

https://brandonrozek.com/blog/rootless-docker-compose-podman/

The one big gotcha I’ve hit is that if you have SELinux on your system, you’ll want to add :z to your volume(s) mount to have it automatically deal with SELinux stuff. (Lowercase z for volumes that can be mounted for multiplayer containers and uppercase Z for volumes that are tied to a specific container.)

But, I’ve found that using “quadlet” service files is much, much better than using podman-compose or docker-compose. There’s a program called “podlet” that can even convert compose files to service files (quadlet)… It can convert command line flags and kubes and other formats too.

Quadlets are basically systems service files that integrate with podman, letting you easily set up a container as a system (or even user level) service, making managing a container just like managing any other service.

Here’s the podlet command that’ll convert things to quadlets: https://github.com/containers/podlet

I replaced docker with podman on all of my systems, and so far i really have nothing to complain about. Works exactly as advertised

Take a look at the podman kube play command which lets you run K8s-style stack definitions on podman. Has partly replaced compose for me (although I still have some docker servers running for stacks that don’t play nicely with podman yet).

In my experience podman compose is not a sufficient replacement.

Docker compose can be used with podman via the podman socket daemon. It’s very easy to get working. Give it a try.

It was not great for a long time but improved a lot in 2024