How to docker-compose up only for services?

Question

In my docker-compose.yml file I have plenty of services:

nginx
mysql
redis
echo
php
...

But also some CLI utilities that I use with docker-compose run --rm:

artisan
composer
npm
...

When I start my system I do docker-compose up. Unfortunately this also try to start all the CLI utilities. Is there a way to separate these two categories in my docker-compose?

Does this answer your question? docker-compose up for only certain containers — jonrsharpe
– jonrsharpe, Commented Jul 23, 2020 at 9:37
@jonrsharpe Not really... I do not want the user to know what to start or even create a script only to start certain containers... — nowox
– nowox, Commented Jul 23, 2020 at 9:38
Docker compose is usually a dev tool - who is the user here? What are your constraints? What have you already considered and dismissed, and why? — jonrsharpe
– jonrsharpe, Commented Jul 23, 2020 at 9:39
Those "CLI utilities" sound like steps that should get run in your images' Dockerfiles, not things that would want separate containers. How and when would you use a standalone npm container? You can also docker-compose run commands based on your existing services, which might let you take these utility blocks out of your Compose setup. — David Maze
– David Maze, Commented Jul 23, 2020 at 10:38

acran · Accepted Answer · 2021-01-27 14:39:57Z

11

Update

Starting with docker-compose 1.28.0 the new service profiles are just made for that! With profiles you can mark services to be only started in specific profiles:

services:
  nginx:
    # ...
  mysql:
    # ...
  composer:
    profiles: ["cli-only"]
    # ...
    # ...
  npm:
    profiles: ["cli-only"]
    # ...

docker-compose up # start main services, no composer and no npm
docker-compose run --rm composer
docker-compose run --rm npm

original answer

Unfortunately there is currently no convenient way to do this. The officially recommended way to do it is to separate your commands into its own docker-compose.yml:

# start all your services
docker-compose up

# execute a defined command in docker-compose.cli.yml
docker-compose -f docker-compose.cli.yml run npm update

# if your command depends_on a service you need to merge the configs
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.cli.yml run npm update

Specifying multiple docker-compose.yml files with the -f flag will merge them together, see the documentation. This allows you to depend on services/networks/volumes which are defined in another file.

For an in-depth discussion on the whole issue see docker/compose#1896.

edited Jan 27, 2021 at 14:39

answered Jul 23, 2020 at 10:06

acran

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3 Comments

nowox Over a year ago

Unfortunately with two separated files, I rely on networks and services that are declared in another file :(

acran Over a year ago

@nowox see the third command then: you can specify multiple docker-compose.yml files which will be merged; I updated my answer to explain this and added a link to the relevant docs.

nowox Over a year ago

Wooh! I didn't get that far. Indeed this is exactly what I am looking for!

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