Auto remove container with docker-compose.yml

Question

docker-compose run has a flag --rm that auto removes the container after run. I am wondering if theres an equivalent config with docker-compose.yml

Answer 1

I haven't found any option to help you define this behavior in the docker-compose.yml file and I think the explanation is the following:

docker-compose up builds, (re)creates, starts, and attaches to containers for a service.

Since your images are built and the containers of your service have started, you can then use docker-compose stop and docker-compose start to start/stop your service. This is different from docker-compose down which:

Stops containers and removes containers, networks, volumes, and images created by up.

Problem with what you are trying to do:

If you docker-compose up and one of your containers finishes its task and gets (auto)removed, then you can't docker-compose stop and docker-compose start again. The removed container will not be there to start it again.

---

You might want to take a look at:

• docker-compose: option to automaticaly remove container after run in docker-compose.yml
• What is the difference between docker-compose up and docker-compose start?

Answer 2

Simply run docker-compose up && docker-compose rm -fsv

Answer 3

I'm not sure I understand, docker-compose run --user is an option, and the docker-compose.yml supports the user key (http://docs.docker.com/compose/yml/#working95dir-entrypoint-user-hostname-domainname-mem95limit-privileged-restart-stdin95open-tty-cpu95shares).

Answer 4

My solution to this was to create a little bash script that automatically removes containers afterwards - It doesn't work with detached mode, but I suppose that might not be such a big issue.

If you're on macOS, you can put this script in usr/local/bin. Assuming it's named d-c, you can then run chmod +x usr/local/bin/d-c to make it executable. On Windows, I have no idea how to get this working, but on Linux it should be similar.

#! /bin/bash

if [[ $1 == "up" ]]; then
    # runs "docker-compose up" and then "docker-compose down"
    docker-compose up "${@:2}"; docker-compose down
elif [[ $1 == "run" ]]; then
    # "d-c run" automatically adds the --rm flag
    docker-compose run --rm "${@:2}"
else
    # any other d-c command runs docker-compose normally
    docker-compose "${@:1}"
fi

Edit:

I've updated my script so that detached mode will work normally:

#! /bin/bash

# check for -d, --detached
DETACHED=false
for (( i=1; i <= "$#"; i++ )); do
  ARG="${!i}"
  case "$ARG" in
    -d|--detach)
      DETACHED=true
      ;;
  esac
done

if [[ $1 == "run" ]] && [[ $DETACHED == false ]]; then
    docker-compose run --rm "${@:2}"
elif [[ $1 == "up" ]] && [[ $DETACHED == false ]]; then
    docker-compose up "${@:2}"; docker-compose down
else
    docker-compose "${@:1}"
fi