Install the Compose plugin

Important

Compose V1 no longer receives updates and will not be available in new releases of Docker Desktop after June 2023.

Compose V2 is included with all currently supported versions of Docker Desktop. For more information, see Migrate to Compose V2.

On this page you can find instructions on how to install the Compose plugin on Linux from the command line.

To install the Compose plugin on Linux, you can either:

Set up Docker’s repository on your Linux system.
Install Compose manually.

Note

These instructions assume you already have Docker Engine and Docker CLI installed and now want to install the Compose plugin.
For Compose standalone, see Install Compose Standalone.

Install using the repository

Set up the repository. Find distro-specific instructions in:

Ubuntu | CentOS | Debian | Fedora | RHEL | SLES.

Update the package index, and install the latest version of Docker Compose:

For Ubuntu and Debian, run:

  $ sudo apt-get update
  $ sudo apt-get install docker-compose-plugin

For RPM-based distros, run:

  $ sudo yum update
  $ sudo yum install docker-compose-plugin

Verify that Docker Compose is installed correctly by checking the version.
```
$ docker compose version
Docker Compose version vN.N.N
```

Where vN.N.N is placeholder text standing in for the latest version.

Update Compose

To update the Compose plugin, run the following commands:

For Ubuntu and Debian, run:

  $ sudo apt-get update
  $ sudo apt-get install docker-compose-plugin

For RPM-based distros, run:

  $ sudo yum update
  $ sudo yum install docker-compose-plugin

Install the plugin manually

Note

This option requires you to manage upgrades manually. We recommend setting up Docker’s repository for easier maintenance.

To download and install the Compose CLI plugin, run:
```
$ DOCKER_CONFIG=${DOCKER_CONFIG:-$HOME/.docker}
$ mkdir -p $DOCKER_CONFIG/cli-plugins
$ curl -SL https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.18.1/docker-compose-linux-x86_64 -o $DOCKER_CONFIG/cli-plugins/docker-compose
```
This command downloads the latest release of Docker Compose (from the Compose releases repository) and installs Compose for the active user under $HOME directory.

To install:
- Docker Compose for all users on your system, replace ~/.docker/cli-plugins with /usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins.
- A different version of Compose, substitute v2.18.1 with the version of Compose you want to use.
- For a different architecture, substitute x86_64 with the architecture you want.

Apply executable permissions to the binary:

 $ chmod +x $DOCKER_CONFIG/cli-plugins/docker-compose

or, if you chose to install Compose for all users:

 $ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose

Test the installation.

 $ docker compose version
 Docker Compose version v2.18.1