Add direct support to `--manifest` for building multi-architecture container images.

[MisterOwlPT]

Hi,

I am using podman‑py to automate the creation of multi‑architecture container images with podman.

My existing CLI workflow looks like this:

podman manifest create example:v1.2.3
podman build --manifest example:v1.2.3 --platform linux/amd64,linux/arm .

When translating these commands into calls to podman-py, I've noticed that the --manifest argument is not supported by the client.images.build function.

I am aware that podman-py already supports creating manifests and adding images to them.
However, I am left wondering if supporting the --manifest would not give developers an experience closer to the existing podman CLI and thus simplify the creation of scripts, as the creation of manifests and addition of images could all be done in a single call.

My proposal, for the same example CLI workflow above, is to allow something like this:

# ...
with PodmanClient(base_url=uri) as client:
  image, _ = client.images.build(
    path=".",
    dockerfile="Containerfile",
    manifest="example:v1.2.3",  # <-- here's the missing field - the manifest is created if it does not exist
    platform=["linux/amd64", "linux/arm64"],
  )

Here, the new optional manifest kwarg would accept the name of the manifest and automatically add the newly built image(s) to it.

What are your opinions on this feature?

Thanks a lot for your attention and for the project!

[inknos]

Thanks @MisterOwlPT for the issue request. On a first glance, I believe this should be implemented and that the lack of manifest in our /libpod/build api docs is a bug.

[inknos]

@MisterOwlPT I confirm it should be documented on podman's side and included in podman-py. would you like to open a PR for it? I can help with review and testing

[MisterOwlPT]

Hi @inknos,

would you like to open a PR for it? I can help with review and testing

Absolutely!
I'll start working on it as soon as possible.

Thanks for the feedback!