docker-compose ps with non-default docker-compose.yml file

Question

I am relatively new to using docker-compose and am running a stack with the following command

docker-compose \
  --project-name version-12 \
  -f installation/docker-compose-common.yml \
  -f installation/docker-compose-erpnext.yml \
  --project-directory installation \
  up -d

now, with the non-default docker-compose.yml files I can't manage to have docker-compose stop , docker-compose ps to work. I have tried to use the -f , or --project-name flags but couldn't make it happen.

Can anyone kindly advise how to make this work in such a scenario?

Answer 1

You need to repeat all of the docker-compose options for every command you need to run.

There are two ways around this. One is to write a shell script wrapper that invokes this command:

#!/bin/sh
# I am `docker-compose-erpnext.sh`
# Run me with any normal `docker-compose` options
exec docker-compose \
  --project-name version-12 \
  -f installation/docker-compose-common.yml \
  -f installation/docker-compose-erpnext.yml \
  --project-directory installation \
  "$@"

Docker Compose also supports environment variables for most of its settings; many of these in turn can also be included in a .env file . You can't specify --project-directory this way, but it's documented to default to the directory of the Compose file.

export COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME=version-12
export COMPOSE_FILE=installation/docker-compose-common.yml:installation/docker-compose-erpnext.yml
docker-compose up -d
docker-compose ps

You can put these two settings in a file name .env in the directory from which you're running docker-compose (not the installation subdirectory); but if you have multiple deployments you're trying to manage, you can't specify an alternate name for the file (there is neither a CLI option nor an environment variable setting for it).