Unable to specify a platform when generating an index image via opm using podman as a build tool

[tinaselenge]

There is no option to specify a platform when generating an index image via opm using podman as a build tool. This is a problem when trying to generate linux/amd64 compatible images on m1 mac. For example, I built a bundle image that is compatible with linux/amd64:

podman build -t <BUNDLE_IMAGE> --platform=linux/amd64 . 

Then generated an index image for it:

 opm index add --bundles <BUNDLE_IMAGE> --tag <INDEX_IMAGE>

When running the image in a cluster, the container crashes due to exec /bin/opm: exec format error . We think this is because the index image was built on linux/arm64 instead of linux/amd64.

When choosing docker as a build tool in the opm command, this doesn't seem to be a problem if you set the following docker env variable:

export DOCKER_DEFAULT_PLATFORM=linux/amd64

However this env variable does not seem to take an effect for podman. You have to set --platform option in the podman command.

[coriaedu]

I found a similar issue here. I have a <BUNDLE_IMAGE> generated only for linux/amd64 platform.

Then, on an linux/arm64 machine, running the opm registry add fails because with podman because it is trying to pull an image that matches the host platform (linux/arm64) and it is not found.

opm registry add --bundle-images <BUNDLE_IMAGE> --container-tool podman

The environment is a little more complicated than the example, but that's the gist of it.