Nicolas De Loof 081ca8f645 chore(compose): orphan semantics stated where up and down diverge
A container is orphaned when it is a one-off (compose run) that FINISHED
its task, or when it carries the project labels but its service is not
defined by the compose model — the typical leftover after the compose
file was edited. A still-RUNNING one-off is somebody's live session:
'up --remove-orphans' cleans up leftovers and must never kill it.
'down --remove-orphans' is the explicit stop-the-application action, so
it DOES take running one-offs down — through the per-service removal
loop, not the orphan branch.

That asymmetry was implemented but stated nowhere: isOrphaned's comment
only mentioned the model-absent half, down.go removed running one-offs
as an unexplained side effect of including one-offs in the listing, and
the observed-state collection silently dropped running one-offs with no
hint it was deliberate. No behavior change — the semantics are now
written at all three sites and pinned by tests: the predicate matrix,
the observed-state classification (a running one-off is neither a
service replica nor an orphan), and down's single stop+remove path for
a running one-off of a declared service.

Closes item C.4 of #14074.

Signed-off-by: Nicolas De Loof <[email protected]>
2026-08-31 17:09:19 +02:00
2026-08-14 14:20:41 +02:00
2020-08-17 10:20:49 +02:00
2026-07-16 11:39:14 +02:00

Table of Contents

Docker Compose

GitHub release PkgGoDev Build Status Codecov OpenSSF Scorecard Docker Compose

Docker Compose is a tool for running multi-container applications on Docker defined using the Compose file format. A Compose file is used to define how one or more containers that make up your application are configured. Once you have a Compose file, you can create and start your application with a single command: docker compose up.

Note

: About Docker Swarm Docker Swarm used to rely on the legacy compose file format but did not adopt the compose specification so is missing some of the recent enhancements in the compose syntax. After acquisition by Mirantis swarm isn't maintained by Docker Inc, and as such some Docker Compose features aren't accessible to swarm users.

Where to get Docker Compose

Windows and macOS

Docker Compose is included in Docker Desktop for Windows and macOS.

Linux

You can download Docker Compose binaries from the release page on this repository.

Rename the relevant binary for your OS to docker-compose and copy it to $HOME/.docker/cli-plugins

Or copy it into one of these folders to install it system-wide:

  • /usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins OR /usr/local/libexec/docker/cli-plugins
  • /usr/lib/docker/cli-plugins OR /usr/libexec/docker/cli-plugins

(might require making the downloaded file executable with chmod +x)

Quick Start

Using Docker Compose is a three-step process:

  1. Define your app's environment with a Dockerfile so it can be reproduced anywhere.
  2. Define the services that make up your app in compose.yaml so they can be run together in an isolated environment.
  3. Lastly, run docker compose up and Compose will start and run your entire app.

A Compose file looks like this:

services:
  web:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "5000:5000"
    volumes:
      - .:/code
  redis:
    image: redis

Contributing

Want to help develop Docker Compose? Check out our contributing documentation.

If you find an issue, please report it on the issue tracker.

Legacy

The Python version of Compose is available under the v1 branch.

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Define and run multi-container applications with Docker
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