Native support of Windows Containers for Podman for Windows without relying on a VM

[ohault]

Feature request description

On a Windows only environnement, Podman for Windows and Podman Desktop for Windows should be able to be used to work with Windows Containers without relying on any utility VM (podman machine).

Ref: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/

Suggest potential solution

Direct use of Windows API for managing Windows containers and if possible without relying on any docker dependency.

• Host Networking Service (HNS) : https://github.com/microsoft/hnslib
• Host Compute Service (HCS) : https://github.com/microsoft/hcsshim

Via containerd running locally on the Windows host, it should possible to have the interface with HCS, see runhcs -https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/deploy-containers/containerd

Have you considered any alternatives?

https://www.tunbury.org/2025/06/11/windows-containerd/

Additional context

Add any other context or screenshots about the feature request here.