Stage 4 · Provision

Docker Compose

Compose Operations

Operate stacks with docker compose up, down, logs, ps, exec, run, pull, and build.

6 min readDocker & ContainersProvision

Lifecycle Commands

Docker Compose provides commands to manage the entire lifecycle of your application stack. These commands operate on all services defined in your compose.yaml file.

Command	Purpose
docker compose up	Create and start all services
docker compose down	Stop and remove containers, networks
docker compose stop	Stop services without removing them
docker compose start	Start stopped services
docker compose restart	Restart services
docker compose rm	Remove stopped service containers

Basic lifecycle operations


# Start all services in foreground
docker compose up

# Start in detached mode
docker compose up -d

# Stop and remove everything
docker compose down

# Stop and remove including volumes
docker compose down -v

# Stop without removing (preserves state)
docker compose stop

# Start stopped services
docker compose start

up creates networks, volumes, and containers. down removes them. stop preserves containers for faster restart. -v removes named volumes defined in the compose file.

Building Images

Build operations


# Build all services
docker compose build

# Build a specific service
docker compose build api

# Build without cache
docker compose build --no-cache api

# Pull latest base images
docker compose pull

# Build and start
docker compose up --build

# Build with specific target
docker compose build --target production api

docker compose build builds images for all services that have a build key. --build in up forces a rebuild before starting. pull downloads the latest versions of base images.

Viewing Logs

Log operations


# Follow logs from all services
docker compose logs -f

# Follow logs from a specific service
docker compose logs -f api

# Show last 100 lines
docker compose logs --tail 100

# Show logs since 5 minutes ago
docker compose logs --since 5m

# Show timestamps
docker compose logs -t api

docker compose logs aggregates logs from all services. -f follows new output (like tail -f). --tail limits the number of lines. You can filter by service name.

Exec and Run

Exec and run commands


# Execute a command in a running service
docker compose exec api sh

# Execute as root
docker compose exec -u root api sh

# Run a one-off command (creates a new container)
docker compose run api python manage.py migrate

# Run and remove the container after
docker compose run --rm api python manage.py test

# Pass environment variables
docker compose run -e DEBUG=true api python script.py

exec runs in an existing container. run creates a new container for one-off tasks. Use --rm with run to clean up after the command completes.

Scaling Services

Scaling services


# Scale a service to 3 instances
docker compose up -d --scale api=3

# Scale multiple services
docker compose up -d --scale api=3 --scale worker=2

# Check running instances
docker compose ps

Scaling creates multiple containers for the same service. Each instance gets a unique name (e.g., app-api-1, app-api-2). Load balancing between instances requires an external tool like Traefik.

Useful Flags

Flag	Purpose
-d	Detached mode (background)
--build	Force rebuild before starting
-f FILE	Specify compose file
-p NAME	Set project name
--profile NAME	Activate a profile
--remove-orphans	Remove containers for services not in the file
--force-recreate	Recreate containers even if unchanged

Common flag combinations


# Full rebuild and restart
docker compose up -d --build --force-recreate

# Clean start with orphan removal
docker compose up -d --remove-orphans

# Specific file and project
docker compose -f compose.prod.yaml -p production up -d

# Dry run (show what would happen)
docker compose up --dry-run

These flags modify how Compose executes commands. Combine them as needed for your workflow. --dry-run is useful for debugging Compose configuration.

Use docker compose down -v for clean slates

When starting fresh, docker compose down -v removes containers, networks, AND volumes. This ensures no stale data interferes. Be careful — this deletes all persistent data.

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