Export an image to plain tar / directory

[janvhs]

Is it possible to export an image to a plain tar archive or directory? I want to inspect the filesystem of a container without having executed it and can't seem to find a suitable command to do so.

podman save can only export to oci-* or docker-* formats and these don't give me a plain / flat structure. podman export only let's you use an instantiated container, which mean it got executed.

[afbjorklund]

You can use podman create to just create a container, without running it like podman run (or corresponding podman start).

[janvhs]

Thank you!