I'm interested in opening a conversation about whether we can extend the

docker_image

target to support non-Docker image builders such as Podman. I have written a plugin which provides an

oci_image

target, delegating to Podman under the covers, by basically just mercilessly extending from a handful of the Pants standard docker backend classes. But I'm wondering if there might be more robust approaches which could be contributed back to Pants core -- for example, having

pants.toml

able to specify which binary should be used in place of

docker

(noting this would only work for those cases in which a given container builder is compatible with the

docker

command-line, and indeed with `Dockerfile`s, like

podman

is). What's the best forum to have that conversation -- should I open an issue?

Here, an issue,or GH discussion are all fine places. Some related "options for building docker images" tickets at: https://github.com/pantsbuild/pants/issues/15199 https://github.com/pantsbuild/pants/issues/14395