Using profiles with Compose

Table of contents

Profiles help you adjust your Compose application for different environments or use cases by selectively activating services. Services can be assigned to one or more profiles; unassigned services start by default, while assigned ones only start when their profile is active. This setup means specific services, like those for debugging or development, to be included in a single compose.yml file and activated only as needed.

Assigning profiles to services

Services are associated with profiles through the profiles attribute which takes an array of profile names:

services:
  frontend:
    image: frontend
    profiles: [frontend]

  phpmyadmin:
    image: phpmyadmin
    depends_on: [db]
    profiles: [debug]

  backend:
    image: backend

  db:
    image: mysql

Here the services frontend and phpmyadmin are assigned to the profiles frontend and debug respectively and as such are only started when their respective profiles are enabled.

Services without a profiles attribute are always enabled. In this case running docker compose up would only start backend and db.

Valid profiles names follow the regex format of [a-zA-Z0-9][a-zA-Z0-9_.-]+.

Tip
The core services of your application shouldn't be assigned profiles so they are always enabled and automatically started.

Start specific profiles

To start a specific profile supply the --profile command-line option or use the COMPOSE_PROFILES environment variable:

$ docker compose --profile debug up

$ COMPOSE_PROFILES=debug docker compose up

Both commands start the services with the debug profile enabled. In the previous compose.yml file, this starts the services db, backend and phpmyadmin.

Start multiple profiles

You can also enable multiple profiles, e.g. with docker compose --profile frontend --profile debug up the profiles frontend and debug will be enabled.

Multiple profiles can be specified by passing multiple --profile flags or a comma-separated list for the COMPOSE_PROFILES environment variable:

$ docker compose --profile frontend --profile debug up

$ COMPOSE_PROFILES=frontend,debug docker compose up

If you want to enable all profiles at the same time, you can run docker compose --profile "*".

Auto-starting profiles and dependency resolution

When a service with assigned profiles is explicitly targeted on the command line its profiles are started automatically so you don't need to start them manually. This can be used for one-off services and debugging tools. As an example consider the following configuration:

services:
  backend:
    image: backend

  db:
    image: mysql

  db-migrations:
    image: backend
    command: myapp migrate
    depends_on:
      - db
    profiles:
      - tools

# Only start backend and db
$ docker compose up -d

# This runs db-migrations (and,if necessary, start db)
# by implicitly enabling the profiles `tools`
$ docker compose run db-migrations

But keep in mind that docker compose only automatically starts the profiles of the services on the command line and not of any dependencies.

This means that any other services the targeted service depends_on should either:

Share a common profile
Always be started, by omitting profiles or having a matching profile started explicitly

services:
  web:
    image: web

  mock-backend:
    image: backend
    profiles: ["dev"]
    depends_on:
      - db

  db:
    image: mysql
    profiles: ["dev"]

  phpmyadmin:
    image: phpmyadmin
    profiles: ["debug"]
    depends_on:
      - db

# Only start "web"
$ docker compose up -d

# Start mock-backend (and, if necessary, db)
# by implicitly enabling profiles `dev`
$ docker compose up -d mock-backend

# This fails because profiles "dev" is not enabled
$ docker compose up phpmyadmin

Although targeting phpmyadmin automatically starts the profiles debug, it doesn't automatically start the profiles required by db which is dev.

To fix this you either have to add the debug profile to the db service:

db:
  image: mysql
  profiles: ["debug", "dev"]

or start the dev profile explicitly:

# Profiles "debug" is started automatically by targeting phpmyadmin
$ docker compose --profile dev up phpmyadmin
$ COMPOSE_PROFILES=dev docker compose up phpmyadmin

Stop specific profiles

As with starting specific profiles, you can use the --profile command-line option or use the COMPOSE_PROFILES environment variable:

$ docker compose --profile debug down

$ COMPOSE_PROFILES=debug docker compose down

Both commands stop and remove services with the debug profile. In the following compose.yml file, this stops the services db and phpmyadmin.

services:
  frontend:
    image: frontend
    profiles: [frontend]

  phpmyadmin:
    image: phpmyadmin
    depends_on: [db]
    profiles: [debug]

  backend:
    image: backend

  db:
    image: mysql

Note
Running docker compose down only stops backend and db.

Reference information

profiles