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Local Container Usage (Podman + NoETL Playbooks)

This page replaces legacy Docker/Make workflows with the current local development approach:

  • Podman as the container runtime
  • kind for local Kubernetes
  • noetl playbooks for build, load, deploy, and status

Overview​

For local development, run NoETL through automation playbooks in repos/ops:

  1. Build container image with Podman
  2. Load image into kind cluster
  3. Deploy server and workers with Kubernetes manifests
  4. Verify health and iterate with a single redeploy command

Prerequisites​

  • Podman machine running (recommended name: noetl-dev)
  • kind
  • kubectl
  • noetl CLI
  • repos/ops and repos/noetl checked out

Quick Start​

From ai-meta root:

# Full local cycle (build -> load -> deploy -> status)
noetl run repos/ops/automation/development/noetl.yaml --runtime local \
  --set action=redeploy --set noetl_repo_dir=repos/noetl

# Verify health
curl -s http://localhost:8082/api/health

Expected output includes:

Common Actions​

# Build image only
noetl run repos/ops/automation/development/noetl.yaml --runtime local \
  --set action=build --set noetl_repo_dir=repos/noetl

# Load image to kind only
noetl run repos/ops/automation/development/noetl.yaml --runtime local \
  --set action=load --set noetl_repo_dir=repos/noetl

# Deploy only
noetl run repos/ops/automation/development/noetl.yaml --runtime local \
  --set action=deploy --set noetl_repo_dir=repos/noetl

# Status
noetl run repos/ops/automation/development/noetl.yaml --runtime local \
  --set action=status --set noetl_repo_dir=repos/noetl

Podman Notes​

  • The playbook handles local image naming differences between local/... and localhost/local/... automatically.
  • If kind was created before port mapping changes, recreate the cluster to apply new mappings.

Run Playbooks (No Containers Required)​

For DSL/playbook development and tests, use local runtime directly:

# Run a file-based playbook locally
noetl run repos/noetl/tests/fixtures/playbooks/hello_world/hello_world.yaml -r local -v

# Register fixtures for distributed runtime
noetl register playbook --directory repos/noetl/tests/fixtures/playbooks

Troubleshooting​

ErrImageNeverPull​

Root cause is usually image name mismatch or missing kind load.

# Re-run load and deploy
noetl run repos/ops/automation/development/noetl.yaml --runtime local --set action=load --set noetl_repo_dir=repos/noetl
noetl run repos/ops/automation/development/noetl.yaml --runtime local --set action=deploy --set noetl_repo_dir=repos/noetl

Podman machine is not running​

podman machine start noetl-dev

API not reachable​

kubectl -n noetl get pods
kubectl -n noetl get svc
curl -s http://localhost:8082/api/health

Next Steps​