compose support?

[magnusviri]

Will you be creating a tool that allows users to use docker_compose.yml files?

See https://docs.docker.com/compose/.

[awilfox]

Yes, I would also love to see Compose support for container. Is this something that would accepted as a contribution?

[bergrahm]

I am a heavy-weight compose user. Having the option to drop and replace would dramatically increase the chance for me to adopt this tool without hassle. Great work by the way!

[codedoga]

+1

[psy0rz]

Without compose support i will just keep using docker desktop for now. What would be the advantage of this new system?

[ArquitetoMovel]

I'm using the https://orbstack.dev it also is made in swift and not use vm

[66Ton99]

https://orbstack.dev/ uses VM underhood

[koi-tattoo]

I've rolled up a script to emulate some functionalities of docker-compose https://gist.github.com/koi-tattoo/1decd7f52f55ddb902e8a9eb78f8c587.
I mostly generated it through claude 4 sonnet as I was just trying to have something working fast. It managed to up this compose file https://gist.github.com/koi-tattoo/5f91de153768865d6d29f3773564a75d decently, maybe you guys can try to use it to easily test apple containers through your already established compose files.

Edit: see the issue docker/compose/issues/12934, maybe it is on docker-compose's end to implement this feature.

[ralfkrause]

I’ll test it and will give an update here.

[ralfkrause]

The scripts does the main things.
During up volumes if not defined with type bind are skipped. Giving error message 'named volumes...'.
During down I got the error message that the container could not be deleted. But that's just because they are getting started with option --rm. But that's no big deal.
Setting the hostname of the container is not supported. But that's because it's not supported by Apples container system. At least not at the moment.
It's the same as the container name.
Traffic between container of the same multi container project does not work when using the hostname of the container. But there is no problem when using the IP address.

But far from that all I tested works.

[t3chn0m4g3]

yes, compose is the peanut-butter and jelly!

[psy0rz]

Dont get me wrong its super cool apple does this!

[bgottsch]

+1

some integration pointers:

• naming: container compose?
• load balancers like Traefik as a container

[llmons]

+1

[pszymkowiak]

+1

[dmatton]

+1

[koi-tattoo]

According to docker/compose#12934, it could be done if the apple container runtime supports the Moby API (https://github.com/moby/moby/blob/master/api/README.md)

[mani-arjunan]

+1

[tarikweiss]

+1

[EugeneBad]

+1E6

[dan-and]

I would love to see container compose support as well.

[AlexBa]

Need it to. 😃

[Mcrich23]

For those who need a tool right now, you can check out the tool I made: Container-Compose. It's installable via homebrew if that's your thing and will support a good amount of compose features without any modification.

It also is verified to work with the default configuration of Vapor

[mevrin-ueat]

Nice and the important thing it is compatible with existing compose.yaml files

[stevo-knievo]

macOS Tahoe 26 here — hoping to see support for container compose soon as well! 🙏

[kvokka]

+1 for this initiative

[sfatula]

As a developer and user, the ability to use compose syntax is critical. As has been mentioned, MacOS if often used to create and Linux to deploy. Also, there are thousands (millions?) of compose files out there to run various things. The idea there is it’s easy for a non developer to simply use those and adjust any paths if needed. If Apples is different, that’s a barrier for users. All the doc around those compose files, ideally would need redone to support Apple users. Good luck with that.

[heilgar]

For me as a developer, it would be incredibly helpful to have some optimized compose functionality built into the toolchain — but ideally in a way that’s portable.

I work in a mixed-OS team (macOS, Linux, Windows), so being able to share a single docker-compose.yml file is crucial. If the Apple container runtime supported at least the core compose protocol, we could keep one source of truth for local environments across all platforms. As @andrew-waters mentioned earlier, portability and reusing the existing compose ecosystem are a huge win.

At the same time, I really like Apple’s flat network and DNS-based approach. As @adriangalilea pointed out, this eliminates a lot of port conflicts and makes it easy to spin up multiple services without constantly juggling port mappings. It’s a cleaner model in many ways, and I’d love to keep that.

Personally, I don’t mind if the tool translates compose files into the Apple container network model under the hood.

[eddively]

Another +1 for Compose functionality

[Mcrich23]

For those wanting a solution right now, I actually released a CLI tool for this on homebrew. You can get it with brew update && brew install container-compose or from the github repo

[ToyYan]

+1

[ebesirik]

+1 to show support and demand

[youvegotmoxie]

+1 to obnoxiously spam everyone subscribed to this issue.

Seriously, we don't need 900 +1 replies.

[ebesirik]

What you are looking for is probably Feedback Assistant. You sign in as a Developer (or Partner, or Employee) and can directly interact with Apple technicians and register your "suggestion". Depending on the phase of the moon, sometimes you even get a real Radar ID out of it.

When you are interacting with a repository on GitHub, even if it is one where you have a client or customer relationship with the owner of the repository, you are acting as part of an open source community, not as a paying client/customer.

Well thank you for your constructive critisim.
this was a little blurry for me;

When you are interacting with a repository on GitHub, even if it is one where you have a client or customer relationship with the owner of the repository, you are acting as part of an open source community, not as a paying client/customer.

That this is (or not) a big for profit company's repo, therefor we are interacting with it? Or this is an actually a truly open source project/community.

apperantly there is a contribution document that says PR's are welcome, that I hope is sincere and not for only having "open source supporter" badge.

Anyways, thank you @awilfox and all the others who offered alternative solutions

[Mcrich23]

It truly feels to me like a community project. I do not work for Apple, but have had conversations with Apple employees about container via Issues and also had a few PRs merged.

I think they want to do what is best for the community and are very willing to review PRs made by the community.

[TimDiekmann]

Well, in any case, it would be very helpful if Apple would at least respond to this discussion. One of the options — "Not planned," "Planned, but not prioritized," or "In development" — would already be very helpful for the community. Additionally, if they would accept open-source contributions to this topic, that would be great.

If I were to guess, this is somewhat on their radar, but they don’t know what to do about it yet. (Even if they would communicate this it would be super helpful!)

[flindeberg]

@TimDiekmann The entire container framework here is open-source (I'm unsure about all the swift components this repo references, I guess quite a bit of them are closed-source), I guess you can just contribute changes compliant the compose-specification if you are so inclined?

The compose specification is available here: https://www.compose-spec.io/

[Mcrich23]

#239 and #398 exist and reference this discussion at @jglogan’s request so they are definitely aware of it.

My understanding on the current situation is a combination of breaking API changes every update and lack of support for certain features making Apple less confident of shipping an only partially supported service.

Luckily, if #717 is merged into main, we can write a version of compose that just ultimately translates commands and has Swift Argument Parser translate them. This guards against API changes and makes implementing new features within a command slightly easier.

[musikov]

+1 to previous comment

[stivens]

+1

Without compose this app is kinda useless and we are forced to use alternatives. It is a critical and must-have feature.

[youroldmangaming]

https://github.com/youroldmangaming/Apple_Container_Compose

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[hulleyrob]

+1 for built in compose support so that I can actually use this.