Testcontainers uses ‘ryuk’ to clean up containers and it needs docker socket mounted within its container to work. So if you had any hardening config that prevents the docker socket access within a container e.g user namespace or SELinux then Testcontainers doesn’t work.

And I think it would be nice if Testcontainers ‘just worked’ with Podman without any additional steps.

Nothing else. Though docker socket issue was important enough.

I don’t get it, how would a database container run your unit tests? And unless you know some secret option to stop the database after, say, it is idle for a few seconds, it will continue running.

The purpose is to test database dependent code by spinning up a real database and run your code against that.

For me the value of podman is how easily it works without root. Just install and run, no need for sudo or adding myself to docker group.

I use it for testing and dev work, not for running any services.