Is there any way to disable a service in docker-compose.yml [closed]

As of January 2021, there is a way to elegantly disable a service within the docker-compose.yml or to selectively run some services and not others. Docker Compose 1.28.0 introduced support for a profiles key. Now we can do something like:

version: "3.9"
services:
  base_image:
    ...
    profiles:
      - donotstart

Examples in the documentation describe how to use this key to create groups of containers that run together based on a --profile option on the command line. Check out the page here: https://docs.docker.com/compose/profiles/

Update

Support for profiles is working correctly in Compose V2 beta 5 (docker compose). Compose V2 beta 6 has been included in Docker Desktop 3.5.2 released 2021-07-08.

You can do it in a docker-compose.override.yaml file.

This file is automatically read by docker-compose and merged into the main docker-compose.yaml.

If you have it excluded from Git, each developer can tweak the configuration (with a few limitations) without changing the original docker-compose.yaml.

So, service foo can be disabled ad-hoc by redefining its entrypoint in docker-compose.override.yaml:

version: "3"

services:
  foo:
    entrypoint: ["echo", "Service foo disabled"]

assign service to profile(s)

services:
  dev_service:
    ...
    profiles: ["dev"] # only runs with dev profile

enable the profile using

docker compose --profile dev up

ref: https://docs.docker.com/compose/profiles/

I would scale the service to 0 replicas with:

deploy:
      replicas: 0

Unfortunately as the documentation states this only works with Docker Swarm.

I add the following extra line to the service I want to temporarily disable:

command: echo "{put your service name here} disabled"

It starts anyway, but does nothing.

From Docker Compose version 2.24.4 and later you can use !reset and !override YAML tags like this: docker-compose.yml:

services:
  db:
    ...
  service2:
    ...
  service3:
    depends_on: 
      - db
      - service2

docker-compose.override.yml:

services:
  db: !reset
  service3:
    depends_on: !override
      - service2

https://docs.docker.com/compose/compose-file/13-merge/#reset-value

I finally found a solution to mimic conditionally run ALL by default except XXX, while avoiding manipulating profiles and breaking basic usage.

Let's say you have your own docker-compose.yaml, create an override docker-compose.override.yaml that will be automatically taken into account like:

services:
  prestashop:
    profiles:
      - ${DISABLE_PRESTASHOP:-}
  postgres:
    profiles:
      - ${DISABLE_APP:-}
  mariadb:
    profiles:
      - ${DISABLE_PRESTASHOP:-}
  mailcatcher:
    profiles:
      - ${DISABLE_PRESTASHOP:-}

• If you run DISABLE_PRESTASHOP=true docker-compose up only the postgres service will start
• Or if DISABLE_APP=true docker-compose up, prestashop / mariadb / mailcatcher will run
• Or if docker-compose up, since Docker does not assign an empty string value, it will run all services

Notes:

• You could have set DISABLE_APP=whatever it would act as DISABLE_APP=true since it's the profile name we set as required to be launched
• As expected, using docker-compose down will shutdown all launched services due to no profile set

There is no way to disable a service defined in Docker compose yaml file. VonC's suggestion is a good workaround Please see below the docker compose documentation for available options https://docs.docker.com/compose/compose-file/

I got it:

docker-compose up $(yq -r '.services | keys | join(" ")' docker-compose.yml | sed 's/service-name//')