Provide a start VM button after successful disk image build

[odockal]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe

It would be very nice to provide user with a start VM button that would enable the user to spin up the VM from fresh disk image that was just built via the extension.

Describe the solution you'd like

Depending on the os/platform and the vm provider available, we could introduce new button that would lead to a form that would offer to start a VM based on previous step, which was image disk building (image type, etc).

I would have to detect possible vm provider or let user to pick it up or install it.

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Additional context

No response

[cfergeau]

https://github.com/containers/podman-bootc can be used for this.

[cdrage]

Would love that and we actually had this feature early on in development with vfkit / qemu, but unfortunatley there are too many edge cases where people have issues with windows / linux / mac, particularly with qemu.

There are actually two issues in here..

Testing BEFORE a built image:

I would like an integration with https://github.com/containers/podman-bootc in the future like @cfergeau said, but one thing that is very common, is building AMD64 images on mac m1, and then be able to run it. With that, we would need: containers/podman-bootc#27

This would not be very viable as we would have to build it anyways (see the last comment), using bib. Which is what we do in this extension anyways..

Testing AFTER a built image:

Honestly unsure at the moment, we have this documentation: https://github.com/containers/podman-desktop-extension-bootc/blob/main/docs/vm_guide.md

However, there are so many issues with regards to everyone's particular OS, it's easier to say: "Here's the .raw file, figure it out".

We integrate one solution (launching with qemu), but it'll suddenly not work for someone with a different arch (intel vs silicon on mac), or maybe a particular version of qemu got patched incorrectly (happened alot...).

I would like a more eloquent solution and I am open for suggestions!

[cdrage]

We now have two places for this button now that #865 is in.

The buttons are there, and the next part is support for Windows and Linux VM running: #879 and #878

Marking this as closed as we will be tracking this development in other issues.