compose/docs/reference/compose_pull.md

docker compose pull

Pulls an image associated with a service defined in a compose.yaml file, but does not start containers based on those images

Options

Name	Type	Default	Description
--dry-run	bool		Execute command in dry run mode
--ignore-buildable	bool		Ignore images that can be built
--ignore-pull-failures	bool		Pull what it can and ignores images with pull failures
--include-deps	bool		Also pull services declared as dependencies
--policy	string		Apply pull policy ("missing"|"always")
-q, --quiet	bool		Pull without printing progress information

Description

Pulls an image associated with a service defined in a compose.yaml file, but does not start containers based on those images

Examples

Consider the following compose.yaml:

services:
  db:
    image: postgres
  web:
    build: .
    command: bundle exec rails s -p 3000 -b '0.0.0.0'
    volumes:
      - .:/myapp
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    depends_on:
      - db

If you run docker compose pull ServiceName in the same directory as the compose.yaml file that defines the service, Docker pulls the associated image. For example, to call the postgres image configured as the db service in our example, you would run docker compose pull db.

$ docker compose pull db
[+] Running 1/15
 ⠸ db Pulling                                                             12.4s
   ⠿ 45b42c59be33 Already exists                                           0.0s
   ⠹ 40adec129f1a Downloading  3.374MB/4.178MB                             9.3s
   ⠹ b4c431d00c78 Download complete                                        9.3s
   ⠹ 2696974e2815 Download complete                                        9.3s
   ⠹ 564b77596399 Downloading  5.622MB/7.965MB                             9.3s
   ⠹ 5044045cf6f2 Downloading  216.7kB/391.1kB                             9.3s
   ⠹ d736e67e6ac3 Waiting                                                  9.3s
   ⠹ 390c1c9a5ae4 Waiting                                                  9.3s
   ⠹ c0e62f172284 Waiting                                                  9.3s
   ⠹ ebcdc659c5bf Waiting                                                  9.3s
   ⠹ 29be22cb3acc Waiting                                                  9.3s
   ⠹ f63c47038e66 Waiting                                                  9.3s
   ⠹ 77a0c198cde5 Waiting                                                  9.3s
   ⠹ c8752d5b785c Waiting                                                  9.3s

docker compose pull tries to pull image for services with a build section. If pull fails, it lets you know this service image must be built. You can skip this by setting --ignore-buildable flag.