Using Docker Compose

Navigate to the directory containing the docker-compose.yml file before running the following commands.

Quick Start

Quickly build and run the images in detached mode. This is the easiest option for the majority of use cases.

docker compose up -d --build

Start without Cache

To clear the cache and guarantee that you're building your project with the latest version of the images.

docker compose build --pull --no-cache
docker compose up -d

Flag	Description
--pull	Forces Docker to pull the latest base images from the registry before building, ensuring you are using the most up-to-date dependencies.
--no-cache	Prevents Docker from using cached layers, forcing a full rebuild of the image. This ensures that all dependencies and build steps are executed from scratch.

Interact with Individual Images

Once running, the way you interact with images is the same as if you set them up individually. For instance, you can still you the following command to check the images.

docker ps

Stop Images

To stop all the images that the docker-compose.yml set up, you can run the following command. Make sure you are still in the directory containing the docker-compose.yml file for this to work.

docker compose down

These optional flags can be helpful to include to free up space on your environment.

Flag	Description
-v	Removes named volumes created by docker compose. You almost always want to include this flag. For instance, if you create a postgres db image with a volume for its stored data, then including -v will wipe that data when the container is stopped..
--rmi all	Removes all images used by any services in the compose file.
--rmi local	Removes only the images built locally, and not the pulled images.