It's not just mildly annoying, it completely ruins a great thing.

Docker Compose is to stacks what Dockerfiles are to a single application. Podmans solution is to not commit to compose, but instead to create a bespoke mechanism involving a bunch of tiny files, all of which is insanely system (linux) specific, and therefore completely non-portable.

I genuinely don't understand how someone can see the value of Docker, but then do things so completely "not-docker" when it comes to deployment/stacks/orchestration.

> but instead to create a bespoke mechanism involving a bunch of tiny files, all of which is insanely system (linux) specific, and therefore completely non-portable.

To nit pick slightly, it's not really a bespoke mechanism it's just re-using the mechanisms provided by systemd. Quadlets are implemented as a systemd generator in order to re-use the existing service management system that exists on essentially all major Linux distros. Quadlets are less a direct competitor with compose (hence why Podman implements the compose spec) and more a way to better integrate containers with the rest of a system. The closer Podman native equivalent to compose is Kube files.

FWIW, for me docker compose works just fine with podman. I am not sure what kind of additional configuration is needed these days, make sure you are running podman with the socket thing and perhaps set DOCKER_HOST. It's just a client / frontend to an API that podman provides.

Depends on your point of view.

It can be argued that it’s Docker that is reinventing the wheel and doing its own bespoke process management, journal management etc when all of these are solved problems on Linux. Podman is instead reusing the platform which exists, Quadlets are just reusing systemd, so as a sysadmin I can manage, control and monitor docker containers using the same standard tooling that I already use to manage, control and monitor all the other processes which are running on the system.

Architecturally I find the above argument attractive. The problem is chronology. Docker and docker compose came before systems was ubiquitous and long before Quadlets, so it’s natural to think of Quadlets as reinventing the wheel.

Personally I wish docker had not rejected composition/integration around systemd. Would have made everyone’s job a lot easier in the long term.