[pkg-go] Bug#1062176: podman: Package containers-storage should be recommended

[Faidon Liambotis]

Control: reassign -1 src:golang-github-containers-storage 1.43.0+ds1-8
Control: fixed -1 1.48.1+ds1-1

On Wed, Jan 31, 2024 at 03:45:35PM +0100, Holger Leskien wrote:
> at the moment the dependency on the containers-storage package is "suggests"
> only. However, this means that the package is not installed when podman is
> installed and rootless (all?) containers are then started with the storage
> driver vfs, even though overlay would be possible. This is slow, uses much more
> space and leads to a poor user experience.
> 
> I only noticed that vfs was the cause with a large image with many layers and
> looked for a solution. Installing containers-storage would have been so easy.
> 
> Please change the dependency to Recommends.

I understand how a VFS driver default makes for a poor out of the box
experience.

First of all, I can verify that bookworm rootless defaults to "vfs", as
you established. bookworm rootful, and trixie/sid rootful as well as
rootless default to "overlay". 

I don't think your proposed fix is correct. Installing
containers-storage (and thus a storage.conf) may or may not be a good
idea, I am not sure about that.

However, the cause of your issue here is clear to me: the
containers-storage code (which podman embeds, as it's Go code) up until
v1.47 defaulted to "vfs". This was changed with:
https://github.com/containers/storage/commit/e3b18ab721f02f801d93806ac789e958cbe6a050
and amended with:
https://github.com/containers/storage/commit/9ef15e4d49b76a9af9f548e9415153009faa54d8
Both in >= 1.47.

While we could backport these commits in a future stable upload, I am
not sure if these are appropriate for a stable release. This means
retroactively changing Debian's defaults in a stable update, and to a
value that diverges from upstream for that particular combination of
containers-storage and podman.

Regards,
Faidon