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Heavy compose user here, and when I tried the podman equivalent of compose was missing some functionality that made me move back.

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I had the same experience, and I'm not really sure why I can't use docker-compose with podman. If it's a drop in replacement, why can't I alias podman as docker and use docker-compose like normal?

I did try that and it doesn't work, and podman compose isn't as useable. So I switched back to docker.

>If it's a drop in replacement, why can't I alias podman as docker and use docker-compose like normal?

Podman is (mostly) a drop-in replacement for docker. However, docker-compose is a separate package from docker that requires explicit installation. So too is podman-compose separate from podman, though unfortunately it still needs more work.

I can explain this. Because docker-compose talks to the docker socket and uses the docker protocol. This was the last piece that we nailed with podman. As of Podman 2.0 with the new REST based API with a Docker compatibility layer, we are very close to just being able to use the docker-compose binary to talk to a socket (ran by systemd) which fires up podman.

It doesn't quite work yet today because we are still implementing some of the REST verbs, but it's close. It's definitely a strategic direction for the roadmap. Stay tuned.

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