Change pre-defined environment variables
Important
From the end of June 2023 Compose V1 won’t be supported anymore and will be removed from all Docker Desktop versions.
Make sure you switch to Compose V2 with the
docker compose
CLI plugin or by activating the Use Docker Compose V2 setting in Docker Desktop. For more information, see the Evolution of Compose
Compose already comes with pre-defined environment variables.
This page contains information on how you can change the following pre-defined environment variables if you need to:
COMPOSE_CONVERT_WINDOWS_PATHS
COMPOSE_FILE
COMPOSE_PROFILES
COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME
DOCKER_CERT_PATH
COMPOSE_PARALLEL_LIMIT
COMPOSE_IGNORE_ORPHANS
COMPOSE_REMOVE_ORPHANS
COMPOSE_PATH_SEPARATOR
Compose also inherits common Docker CLI environment variables, such as DOCKER_HOST
and DOCKER_CONTEXT
. See Docker CLI environment variable reference for details.
Methods to override
You can change the pre-defined environment variables:
- Within your Compose file using the
environment
attribute - With an environment file
- From the command line
- From your shell
When changing or setting any environment variables, be aware of Environment variable precedence.
Configure
COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME
Sets the project name. This value is prepended along with the service name to the container’s name on startup.
For example, if your project name is myapp
and it includes two services db
and web
,
then Compose starts containers named myapp-db-1
and myapp-web-1
respectively.
Compose can set the project name in different ways. The level of precedence (from highest to lowest) for each method is as follows:
- The
-p
command line flag COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME
- The top level
name:
variable from the config file (or the lastname:
from a series of config files specified using-f
) - The
basename
of the project directory containing the config file (or containing the first config file specified using-f
) - The
basename
of the current directory if no config file is specified
Project names must contain only lowercase letters, decimal digits, dashes, and
underscores, and must begin with a lowercase letter or decimal digit. If the
basename
of the project directory or current directory violates this
constraint, you must use one of the other mechanisms.
See also the command-line options overview and using -p
to specify a project name.
COMPOSE_FILE
Specifies the path to a Compose file. Specifying multiple Compose files is supported.
- Default behavior: If not provided, Compose looks for a file named
compose.yaml
ordocker-compose.yaml
in the current directory and, if not found, then Compose searches each parent directory recursively until a file by that name is found. - Default separator: When specifying multiple Compose files, the path separators are, by default, on:
- Mac and Linux:
:
(colon), - Windows:
;
(semicolon).
- Mac and Linux:
The path separator can also be customized using COMPOSE_PATH_SEPARATOR
.
Example: COMPOSE_FILE=docker-compose.yml:docker-compose.prod.yml
.
See also the command-line options overview and using -f
to specify name and path of one or more Compose files.
COMPOSE_PROFILES
Specifies one or more profiles to be enabled on compose up
execution.
Services with matching profiles are started as well as any services for which no profile has been defined.
For example, calling docker compose up
with COMPOSE_PROFILES=frontend
selects services with the
frontend
profile as well as any services without a profile specified.
- Default separator: specify a list of profiles using a comma as separator.
Example: COMPOSE_PROFILES=frontend,debug
This example enables all services matching both the frontend
and debug
profiles and services without a profile.
See also Using profiles with Compose and the --profile
command-line option.
COMPOSE_CONVERT_WINDOWS_PATHS
When enabled, Compose performs path conversion from Windows-style to Unix-style in volume definitions.
- Supported values:
true
or1
, to enable,false
or0
, to disable.
- Defaults to:
0
.
COMPOSE_PATH_SEPARATOR
Specifies a different path separator for items listed in COMPOSE_FILE
.
- Defaults to:
- On MacOS and Linux to
:
, - On Windows to
;
.
- On MacOS and Linux to
COMPOSE_IGNORE_ORPHANS
When enabled, Compose doesn’t try to detect orphaned containers for the project.
- Supported values:
true
or1
, to enable,false
or0
, to disable.
- Defaults to:
0
.
COMPOSE_PARALLEL_LIMIT
Specifies the maximum level of parallelism for concurrent engine calls.
Deprecated in Compose v2
The pre-definded environment variables listed below are deprecated in V2.
COMPOSE_API_VERSION
By default the API version is negotiated with the server. UseDOCKER_API_VERSION
.
See the Docker CLI environment variable reference page.COMPOSE_HTTP_TIMEOUT
COMPOSE_TLS_VERSION
COMPOSE_FORCE_WINDOWS_HOST
COMPOSE_INTERACTIVE_NO_CLI
COMPOSE_DOCKER_CLI_BUILD
UseDOCKER_BUILDKIT
to select between BuildKit and the classic builder. IfDOCKER_BUILDKIT=0
thendocker compose build
uses the classic builder to build images.