Use `podman-version` without starting the podman machine

[arthurbarr]

Feature request description

Running podman version fails on macOS is the Podman machine is not started. Many other similar CLIs (e.g. kubectl) will at least print the client version. It's annoying to need to start a VM to find out which version of the client I have.

Suggest potential solution

Running podman version should just print the client version if it can't connect.

Have you considered any alternatives?

Starting the machine is a solution, but is frustrating.

Additional context

Example of current output:

# podman version
Cannot connect to Podman. Please verify your connection to the Linux system using `podman system connection list`, or try `podman machine init` and `podman machine start` to manage a new Linux VM
Error: unable to connect to Podman socket: failed to connect: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:62099: connect: connection refused

Example from kubectl:

# kubectl version
Client Version: v1.34.1
Kustomize Version: v5.7.1
The connection to the server 127.0.0.1:46227 was refused - did you specify the right host or port?

[afbjorklund]

Podman Desktop uses podman --version, the only problem is that it doesn't say anything about the server version...

• Podman Version reported on a podman machine under Resources is wrong or confussing podman-desktop/podman-desktop#4215

[mheon]

I don't know if we can say much about server version without the machine being started. Maybe we could store metadata about the machine in labels, but that's not a guarantee it hasn't bee updated since?

[arthurbarr]

Personally, I'm OK with not having the server version, if the server isn't currently available. The problem is not displaying the client version, which the client does have, but won't reveal for some reason if it can't first talk to the server.

[danishprakash]

Maybe we could store metadata about the machine in labels, but that's not a guarantee it hasn't bee updated since?

Wouldn't recommend that, though I agree that we should display the client version irrespective of whether we can display the server version or not. FWIW, docker version behaves in this manner (showing only client version) if the daemon is not running.

[mheon]

I'm LGTM on showing only client version if the server is down.

[kyounghunJang]

/assign