podman-diff(1)

📦
version 6.1.4 · 6 versions
, in alpine 3.24, arch rolling, centos-stream 10, centos-stream 9, fedora 43, fedora 44, nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

👑 NAME 👑

podman-diff — the iconic little tool that lets you snoop on what changed inside a container or image's filesystem 💅 (this is the podman-diff(1) page from the General Commands Manual, bestie, section 1, we're fancy here ✨)

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

podman diff [options] container|image [container|image]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Okay so podman diff shows you all the changes on a container or an image's filesystem. The container or image gets compared to its parent layer — OR, if you're feeling extra and passed a second argument, it compares against that second argument instead. main character energy, honestly 🫶

Every line of output gets a lil symbol prefix, and here's the decoder ring 🔮:

  • A — a file or directory was added ✨
  • D — a file or directory was deleted 💀
  • C — a file or directory was changed 🌀

💖 OPTIONS 💖

🎀 --format

Changes up the output into a different format. The only valid format for podman diff is json. That's it, that's the whole list, no cap 🙈

🎀 --latest, -l

Instead of handing over a container name or ID, this just grabs the last created container. So convenient, so lazy, obsessed 😌

⚠️ Real talk though: the last started container can be from other users of Podman on the host machine. So like, don't assume it's yours, bestie 😭 🚫 Also: this option is not available with the remote Podman client, including Mac and Windows machines (excluding WSL2). WSL2 girlies, you're fine 💜

🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

Show container-modified files versus the container's image:

$ podman diff container1
A /myscript.sh

Show container-modified files versus the container's image in JSON format:

$ podman diff --format json myimage
{
  "changed": [
    "/usr",
    "/usr/local",
    "/usr/local/bin"
  ],
  "added": [
    "/usr/local/bin/docker-entrypoint.sh"
  ]
}

Show the difference between the specified container and the image:

$ podman diff container1 image1
A /test

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

go read those next, they're all part of the same friend group 🫶✨

🧚 HISTORY 🧚

August 2017, originally compiled by Ryan Cole rycole@redhat.com ⟨mailto:rycole@redhat.com⟩ 🎀

and that's the whole podman-diff(1) page, bestie!! from the General Commands Manual, all the way back in August 2017, and it's still serving 💅✨ slay, bye!! 💖

📦 where this page comes from