Reopen #21258 Profiles how-to has possible typo or is unclear

[zwimer]

Is this a docs issue?

• My issue is about the documentation content or website

Type of issue

Information is incorrect

Description

Reopening #21258 so that #21258 (comment) is not forgotten / since this issue seems to persist according to this issue: docker/compose#12244 (comment)

Location

https://docs.docker.com/compose/how-tos/profiles/

Suggestion

If the documentation is correct and the behavior demonstrated is correct, then either I'm missing something obvious or the clarity of the documentation needs to be improved.

[zwimer]

@aevesdocker Is there anything I can help with on this? I've been holding off on using profiles because I'm not sure how they are 'supposed to' work, as a result of this conflict between the documentation and the actual behavior.

[aevesdocker]

Hi @zwimer, if you would like to open a PR with the suggested docs corrections that'd be great.

[tnlx]

I think the docs should distinguish between "enable/activate the profile" (make its services visible to the docker compose command) and "start the service". This is another page in the docs that provides case-by-case examples on how this works.