How to use compose from within the podman machine on windows

[atitusfwd]

Hello All. Let me share my thanks for all the work you have done on Podman, I'm just getting started but it seems great so far. I have tried searching a number of different ways but struggling to figure out how to do one thing: running compose from linux. I have installed podman desktop on windows, and completed the compose setup. When run from powershell, things work. However if I open a terminal window to the podman virtual machine, compose does not work there.

Error: looking up compose provider failed
7 errors occurred:
* exec: "/home/user/.docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose": stat /home/user/.docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose: no such file or directory
* exec: "/usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose": stat /usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose: no such file or directory
* exec: "/usr/local/libexec/docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose": stat /usr/local/libexec/docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose: no such file or directory
* exec: "/usr/lib/docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose": stat /usr/lib/docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose: no such file or directory
* exec: "/usr/libexec/docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose": stat /usr/libexec/docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose: no such file or directory
* exec: "docker-compose": executable file not found in $PATH
* exec: "podman-compose": executable file not found in $PATH

It looks like the setup which installed compose only did it for the windows environment, however there are several places in the guide where it says you can use the Linux VM if you prefer. I do not need access to the older "docker-compose" aka v1 format; Before I possibly make things worse by trying to manually install docker compose packages, is there something else I should be aware of? I am using the latest 5.5.0 podman release. Thanks in advance!

[baude]

compose is not included as part of the vm (but podman ofc is). when you run compose on windows, it interacts with the socket to the podman service in the linux vm. so when you "open a terminal window to the podman virtual machine", compose is no longer part of the equation because it is not installed in the VM. thats why you see the errors you are seeing.

[atitusfwd]

Hello Baude, this makes a lot of sense , and its what I suspected would be happening. Is there any reason that I cannot or should not also install compose in the VM?

[baude]

you can do as you wish ofc. the one thing to note is that if you ever run an upgrade with our image, it will not be present as part of the upgrade; you can, however, install it again