Use the same Lima for both containers and Kubernetes

[afbjorklund]

Is your enhancement related to a problem? Please describe

Currently you can only create a "podman" or "docker" instance, or a "k3s" or "k8s" instance (with containerd).

It is not possible to start Kubernetes on the container engine, nor to access the container runtime of the cluster.

https://podman-desktop.io/docs/lima/customizing

Even if you make a custom template, Podman Desktop currently makes the connections mutually exclusive.

So that when you have the type "kubernetes", you are not able to also have it provide access to the containers.

Describe the solution you'd like

Make it possible for the same (Lima) provider, to have both a connection endpoint* and a kubernetes endpoint*.

• a unix socket, like: docker.sock

• a tcp socket, like: port 6443

In theory you could even run both Docker and Podman on the same instance, but that would be less useful...

Describe alternatives you've considered

You can run "kind", using the podman or docker instance.

We could add another instance field, and run two machines.

The current workaround is to change the provider type in Preferences: Lima, and then restart the Lima provider.

Of course, then you can't access both containers and Kubernetes at the same time (but only one type at a time).

Additional context

No response

[afbjorklund]

Here are some ready-to-run examples, with containers and kubernetes in the same lima:

https://github.com/afbjorklund/lima/tree/podman-desktop/examples/podman-desktop

• Docker Engine (docker.sock) + Kubernetes (containerd runtime)

• Podman Engine (podman.sock) + Kubernetes (cri-o runtime)

The engines and runtimes will share images (or snapshots, for containerd), but not share containers.

You can build or load an image with docker, and it will quickly be available in the cluster (sudo crictl).

• Docker 24.0.5 + Kubernetes 1.29.0 (with flannel)

• Podman 4.8.2 + Kubernetes 1.29.0 (with flannel)