Profiles

Table of contents

With profiles you can define a set of active profiles so your Compose application model is adjusted for various usages and environments.

The services top-level element supports a profiles attribute to define a list of named profiles. Services without a profiles attribute are always enabled.

A service is ignored by Compose when none of the listed profiles match the active ones, unless the service is explicitly targeted by a command. In that case its profile is added to the set of active profiles.

Note

All other top-level elements are not affected by profiles and are always active.

References to other services (by links, extends or shared resource syntax service:xxx) do not automatically enable a component that would otherwise have been ignored by active profiles. Instead Compose returns an error.

Illustrative example

services:web:image:web_imagetest_lib:image:test_lib_imageprofiles:- testcoverage_lib:image:coverage_lib_imagedepends_on:- test_libprofiles:- testdebug_lib:image:debug_lib_imagedepends_on:- test_libprofiles:- debug

In the above example:

  • If the Compose application model is parsed with no profile enabled, it only contains the web service.
  • If the profile test is enabled, the model contains the services test_lib and coverage_lib, and service web, which is always enabled.
  • If the profile debug is enabled, the model contains both web and debug_lib services, but not test_lib and coverage_lib, and as such the model is invalid regarding the depends_on constraint of debug_lib.
  • If the profiles debug and test are enabled, the model contains all services; web, test_lib, coverage_lib and debug_lib.
  • If Compose is executed with test_lib as the explicit service to run, test_lib and the test profile are active even if test profile is not enabled.
  • If Compose is executed with coverage_lib as the explicit service to run, the service coverage_lib and the profile test are active and test_lib is pulled in by the depends_on constraint.
  • If Compose is executed with debug_lib as the explicit service to run, again the model is invalid regarding the depends_on constraint of debug_lib, since debug_lib and test_lib have no common profiles listed.
  • If Compose is executed with debug_lib as the explicit service to run and profile test is enabled, profile debug is automatically enabled and service test_lib is pulled in as a dependency starting both services debug_lib and test_lib.

See how you can use profiles in Docker Compose.

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