`balena build` with podman-desktop fails to pull source images

[msherman64]

I was checking if it was possible to use the balena-cli with podman-desktop, and its docker integration.

However, when running balena build or balena deploy with any combination of fleets and dockerfiles, I get an Image manifest data unavailable error. It seems that Podman is stricter about the query parameters it expects, and is error-ing on:
(HTTP code 400) unexpected - failed to parse query parameter 'labels': "": unexpected end of JSON input

Is it possible that balena-cli is sending the query key labels with an empty value when pulling images?

The dockerfile to reproduce is:

FROM ubuntu:24.04

And the output of build --debug is below.

❯ balena build  -f chi-edge-dev2 --debug
[debug] new argv=[/opt/homebrew/Cellar/node@20/20.19.0_1/bin/node,/opt/homebrew/bin/balena,build,-f,chi-edge-dev2] length=5
[debug] Deprecation check: 0.03644 days since last npm registry query for next major version release date.
[debug] Will not query the registry again until at least 7 days have passed.
[debug] Event tracking error: Timeout awaiting 'response' for 0ms
[Debug]   Parsing input...
[Debug]   Loading project...
[Debug]   Resolving project...
[Info]    No "docker-compose.yml" file found at "/Users/shermanm/Developer/scratch/chi-edge-dev2"
[Info]    Creating default composition with source: "/Users/shermanm/Developer/scratch/chi-edge-dev2"
[Debug]   Creating project...
[Build]   Building services...
[Build]   main Preparing...
[Info]    Building for aarch64/raspberrypi4-64
[Debug]   Found build tasks:
[Debug]       main: build [.]
[Debug]   Resolving services with [raspberrypi4-64|aarch64]
[Debug]   Found project types:
[Debug]       main: Standard Dockerfile
[Debug]   Prepared tasks; building...
[Debug]   main: Image manifest data unavailable for ubuntu:24.04
[Build]   Built 1 service in 0:00
[Error]   Build failed.
(HTTP code 400) unexpected - failed to parse query parameter 'labels': "": unexpected end of JSON input

Error: (HTTP code 400) unexpected - failed to parse query parameter 'labels': "": unexpected end of JSON input
    at /opt/homebrew/Cellar/balena-cli/21.1.0/libexec/lib/node_modules/balena-cli/node_modules/docker-modem/lib/modem.js:383:17
    at handler (/opt/homebrew/Cellar/balena-cli/21.1.0/libexec/lib/node_modules/balena-cli/node_modules/docker-modem/lib/modem.js:426:11)
    at IncomingMessage.<anonymous> (/opt/homebrew/Cellar/balena-cli/21.1.0/libexec/lib/node_modules/balena-cli/node_modules/docker-modem/lib/modem.js:415:9)
    at IncomingMessage.emit (node:events:536:35)
    at IncomingMessage.emit (node:domain:489:12)
    at endReadableNT (node:internal/streams/readable:1698:12)
    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:82:21)

For further help or support, visit:
https://www.balena.io/docs/reference/balena-cli/#support-faq-and-troubleshooting


[debug] Timeout reporting error to sentry.io

[kb2ma]

@pipex Is this another instance of the array handling issue introduced with docker-modem v5.0.6?

[pipex]

@kb2ma Not sure, looking at the serialization fix it doesn't seem passing an empty labels would have worked before. I suspect is engine implementation dependent because I've also seen this issue with colima, see balena-io-modules/balena-compose#60