compose/docs/reference/compose.md

Description

You can use compose subcommand, docker compose [-f <arg>...] [options] [COMMAND] [ARGS...], to build and manage multiple services in Docker containers.

Use -f to specify name and path of one or more Compose files

Use the -f flag to specify the location of a Compose configuration file.

Specifying multiple Compose files

You can supply multiple -f configuration files. When you supply multiple files, Compose combines them into a single configuration. Compose builds the configuration in the order you supply the files. Subsequent files override and add to their predecessors.

For example, consider this command line:

$ docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.admin.yml run backup_db

The docker-compose.yml file might specify a webapp service.

services:
  webapp:
    image: examples/web
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    volumes:
      - "/data"

If the docker-compose.admin.yml also specifies this same service, any matching fields override the previous file. New values, add to the webapp service configuration.

services:
  webapp:
    build: .
    environment:
      - DEBUG=1

When you use multiple Compose files, all paths in the files are relative to the first configuration file specified with -f. You can use the --project-directory option to override this base path.

Use a -f with - (dash) as the filename to read the configuration from stdin. When stdin is used all paths in the configuration are relative to the current working directory.

The -f flag is optional. If you don’t provide this flag on the command line, Compose traverses the working directory and its parent directories looking for a compose.yaml or docker-compose.yaml file.

Specifying a path to a single Compose file

You can use the -f flag to specify a path to a Compose file that is not located in the current directory, either from the command line or by setting up a COMPOSE_FILE environment variable in your shell or in an environment file.

For an example of using the -f option at the command line, suppose you are running the Compose Rails sample, and have a compose.yaml file in a directory called sandbox/rails. You can use a command like docker compose pull to get the postgres image for the db service from anywhere by using the -f flag as follows:

$ docker compose -f ~/sandbox/rails/compose.yaml pull db

Use -p to specify a project name

Each configuration has a project name. If you supply a -p flag, you can specify a project name. If you don’t specify the flag, Compose uses the current directory name. Project name can also be set by COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME environment variable.

Most compose subcommand can be ran without a compose file, just passing project name to retrieve the relevant resources.

$ docker compose -p my_project ps -a
NAME                 SERVICE    STATUS     PORTS
my_project_demo_1    demo       running             

$ docker compose -p my_project logs
demo_1  | PING localhost (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
demo_1  | 64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.095 ms

Use profiles to enable optional services

Use --profile to specify one or more active profiles Calling docker compose --profile frontend up will start the services with the profile frontend and services without any specified profiles. You can also enable multiple profiles, e.g. with docker compose --profile frontend --profile debug up the profiles frontend and debug will be enabled.

Profiles can also be set by COMPOSE_PROFILES environment variable.

Set up environment variables

You can set environment variables for various docker compose options, including the -f, -p and --profiles flags.

Setting the COMPOSE_FILE environment variable is equivalent to passing the -f flag, COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME environment variable does the same for to the -p flag, and so does COMPOSE_PROFILES environment variable for to the --profiles flag.

If flags are explicitly set on command line, associated environment variable is ignored