Awesome, so, essentially, you create a name.pod file like so: […]and join every container into the pod through the following line in the .container files

Yep, that’s the way!

and I presume this all gets started via systemctl --user start name.service and systemd/podman figures out somehow which containers will have to be created and joined into the pod, or do they all have to be started individually?

Systemd figures it out iff you have specified your service dependencies correctly, with things like After=, Upholds=, BindsTo=, etc. Have a look at systemd.unit manpage for details. For my paperless service, it goes something like this:

1. The entrypoint is paperless.container, which I start with systemctl --user start paperless, which depends on:
   • paperless.pod
   • Three other services, which also depend on:
     • paperless.pod
2. Systemd figures out that the paperless pod should be started first, and does that
3. Systemd startes the three dependent containers
4. Finally, systemd starts the paperless container itself

The point of quadlet was to lean as heavily as possible on systemd for the service and dependency bits and use podman only for translating the container bits into something systemd can handle. The one bit of dependency handling that quadlet does is to make sure that paperless.pod is started before all containers that have Pod=paperless.pod in their quadlet file.

Either way, I find the documentation of this feature lacking. When I tested this stuff myself, I’ll look into improving it.

That would be amazing, of course! :) I find that, if you’re familiar with unit files, you’re like 85% of the way there already. By the way, the unit files that quadlet generates are somewhere in $XDG_RUNTUME_DIR for you to inspect. I’m afraid I’m not at a computer right now andI don’t know the exact path off the top of my head.

Nah, I have a paperless pod created with Quadlet.

https://archive.is/Ylpt9

Is… is this satire? I honestly can’t tell any more

Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song
Only palaces for its inhabitans? Even in fabled Atlantis
The night the ocean engulfed it
The drowning still bawled for their slaves.

The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not have even a cook with him?

Philip of Spain wept when his armada
Went down. Was he the only one to weep?
Frederick the Second won the Seven Year’s War. Who Else won it?

Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?
Every ten years a great man?
Who paid the bill?

So many reports.
So many questions.

– Bertold Brecht, Questions from a worker who reads

Fuck man, I’m so mad I didn’t come up with this. It’s so good