What is Docker Compose?

Docker Compose is a tool for defining and running multi-container applications from a single YAML configuration file. It lets you do things like:

• Start, stop, and rebuild services
• View the status of running services
• Stream the log output of running services
• Run a one-off command on a service

What is Docker Compose used for?

Development environments

You define your application’s dependencies in a single file and can run to start your application.

Automated testing environments

You define your application’s dependencies in a single file and can run to prepare your application for testing so that you can do something like:

docker compose up -d
./run_tests
docker compose down

Single host deployments

If your application will run on a single host machine, you can use Docker Compose in production too.