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Feature Request: Autodiscovery for Podman Quadlets #8951
Description
Is your feature request related to a problem?
Podman Quadlets are similar to Docker Compose service definitions, but they are using a systemd unit like syntax. Quadlets are usually placed in /etc/containers/systemd/ and the simpliest kind of a Quadlet uses the .container file suffix, which I would like for updatecli to support.
Example:
/etc/containers/systemd/wg-easy.container
[Unit]
Description=A simple wireguard management server
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
[Container]
Image=ghcr.io/wg-easy/wg-easy:15.3.0
Environment=INSECURE=true
Volume=/lib/modules:/lib/modules:ro
Volume=/etc/wg-easy:/etc/wireguard:rw
PublishPort=51820:51820/udp
PublishPort=51821:51821/tcpSolution you'd like
I would like to just execute updatecli apply inside the /etc/containers/systemd/ directory and let updatecli do its thing :) Images should be automatically updated and pinned using digests.
Alternatives you've considered
No response
Anything else?
No response
Activity
olblak commentedon May 20, 2026
This is a good idea, we could parse systemd configuration file using https://github.com/coreos/go-systemd/tree/main
We would need a few plugin https://github.com/coreos/go-systemd/tree/main
ScMofeoluwa commentedon May 24, 2026
I'd like to work on this. For the first PR, should I limit the scope to
.containerfiles and autodiscovery ofImage=values using go-systemd, or do you expect a dedicated Quadlet resource plugin too?ChristianCiach commentedon May 24, 2026
I don't even know what a quadlet resource plugin would do. Sorry, I never used the full feature set of updatecli. I usually just
updatecli applymy docker compose files and I am happy that it works 😅There doesn't seem to be a dedicated "docker compose" resource plugin, probably because you can just use the "yaml" resource plugin. In that sense, there should probably (if at all) a systemd-unit resource plugin instead of a specialized quadlet plugin. But this is out of scope of my feature request.
ScMofeoluwa commentedon May 24, 2026
Thanks, that matches my understanding. I'll wait for @olblak confirmation, but autodiscovery only for .container files sounds like the right first scope
olblak commentedon May 24, 2026
Just to clarify here, an autodiscovery plugin is nothing more than a generator of Updatecli manifest.
For example here the docker compose autodiscovery plugin: https://github.com/updatecli/updatecli/blob/main/pkg/plugins/autodiscovery/dockercompose/manifestTemplate.go
Unless we can use the regular expression reliably, we'll need to implement a source/condition/target plugin for systemd configuration using something like https://github.com/coreos/go-systemd/tree/main/unit
Something like https://github.com/updatecli/updatecli/tree/main/pkg/plugins/resources/file
And then implement the autodiscovery plugin
ScMofeoluwa commentedon May 24, 2026
Thanks, that makes sense. I'll start by looking at
pkg/plugins/resources/fileand implement a systemd resource plugin using go-systemd package, then build the Quadlet autodiscovery plugin on top of it. I'll keep the first PR focused on.containerfiles andImage=updates unless you prefer a different scopefeat(systemd): add resource plugin for systemd unit files (#8970)