Skip to main content

Packaging and publishing a Podman Desktop extension

To enable users to install your extension, consider publishing your extension to an Open Container Initiative (OCI) image registry.

Prerequisites​

  • The extension builds successfully. See Writing a Podman Desktop extension.

  • All runtime dependencies are inside the final binary.

  • An OCI image registry to publish to, such as quay.io/fbenoit/my-first-extension.

  • (Optional) The OCI image registry is public to enable anybody to fetch the image.

Procedure​

  1. Create and edit a Containerfile file.

  2. Use a scratch image. The extension requires no runtime:

    FROM scratch

  3. Apply mandatory Podman Desktop metadata on the OCI image:

    LABEL org.opencontainers.image.title="My first extension" \
          org.opencontainers.image.description="Example of extension" \
          org.opencontainers.image.vendor="podman-desktop" \
          io.podman-desktop.api.version=">= 0.12.0"

    io.podman-desktop.api.version=">= 0.12.0" sets the minimal Podman Desktop version that the extension requires to run.

  4. Copy the extension assembly, including the metadata, icon, and production binary, to the /extension folder inside the image:

    COPY package.json /extension/
    COPY icon.png /extension/
    COPY dist /extension/dist

  5. Build an image:

    $ podman build -t quay.io/fbenoit/my-first-extension .

  6. Push the image and manifest to the OCI image registry:

    $ podman push quay.io/fbenoit/my-first-extension

Next steps​