Launching compose file from compose file

Question

Let's say I have system A started by a compose file A_compose, let's say I want to start system A from compose file B which also does other stuff.

Can I execute a compose file in another directory using the top level compose file?

This is exactly what compose does already. Are you talking about factorising the solution to avoid having a file get too big? — Bruce Becker, Commented Jul 31 at 15:47
A compose file doesn't "execute" anything other than Docker containers. You could do something janky involving granting a container spawned by the compose file access to the docker socket, and have that container run a docker compose up, but I think that would be a lot of work for little gain. — larsks, Commented Aug 3 at 3:27

Ortomala Lokni · Accepted Answer · 2024-08-17 08:23:01Z

You can use the extends attribute in your docker compose file.

Docker Compose's extends attribute lets you share common configurations among different files, or even different projects entirely.

If you have a common-services.yml:

services:
  webapp:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    volumes:
      - "/data"

You can then reuse common-services.yml in another docker compose file:

services:
  web:
    extends:
      file: common-services.yml
      service: webapp

Read the documentation for more information.

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