Now available: Use Docker Compose with Depot

A month ago, we announced our configure-docker command, and we're excited to announce an expansion of it that covers Docker Compose and other tools that leverage docker buildx build!

Our latest release of the Depot CLI expands our new command that installs Depot as a Docker CLI plugin to configure a default buildx driver to use Depot as well. Allowing you to leverage Depot for any workloads that use docker buildx build, like Docker Compose. All without having to change a single line of code 🎉

How it works

First, you must install the latest version of the Depot CLI. See our CLI installation docs for more details.

Once you have the latest version of the CLI installed, you can run the following command:

depot configure-docker
Successfully installed Depot as a Docker CLI plugin

Behind the scenes, in addition to installing Depot as a Docker CLI plugin, the command configures a default buildx driver that routes builds to Depot. Allowing any docker buildx build commands to use Depot, in addition to the existing docker build command.

Using Depot with Docker Compose

Once the configure-docker command is executed, you can use Depot with Docker Compose without changing a single line of code. All you need to do is ensure you have a Depot project configured for your build. You can do this via:

Setting a DEPOT_PROJECT_ID environment variable to the project ID of the project you want to use for builds.
Running depot init in the root of the repository in which you're building your image. The command creates a depot.json file that our plugin will detect.

If you have a Depot project configured, you can run docker compose build, and Depot will build the images in your Docker compose file. You can see this in action in the following example.

Here is our example Docker compose file with a single service:

services:
  app:
    build:
      dockerfile: Dockerfile.app
      platforms:
        - 'linux/amd64'
        - 'linux/arm64'
      tags:
        - repo/app:123

The Dockerfile that it is building looks like this:

FROM node:16 AS build
 
WORKDIR /app
COPY package.json yarn.lock tsconfig.json ./
COPY src/ ./src/
RUN yarn install --immutable
RUN yarn build
 
FROM node:16
WORKDIR /app
COPY --from=build /app/node_modules /app/node_modules
COPY --from=build /app/dist /app/dist
COPY gifs-to-upload/ dist/gifs-to-upload/
ENV NODE_ENV production
CMD ["node", "--enable-source-maps", "./dist/index.js"]

Now, all you have to do is call build or up just as you usually would.

docker compose build
#1 [app depot] build: https://depot.dev/orgs/123/projects/456/builds/000
#1 DONE 0.0s
#2 [app depot] build: https://depot.dev/orgs/123/projects/456/builds/111
#2 DONE 0.0s
# ...continued output from Docker Compose

You can see that the Docker is building with Depot. It creates a separate build for each architecture and service defined in the compose.yml.

If you want to use Depot with Docker Compose but prefer to use the up command, you can also do that. Just run docker compose up, and Depot will build your images.

docker compose up
[+] Building 33.0s (19/19)
 => [app depot] build: https://depot.dev/orgs/123/projects/456/builds/222                                                                  0.0s
 => [app depot] launching arm64 machine                                                                                                                                                         2.0s
 => [app depot] connecting to arm64 machine                                                                                                                                                     6.9s
 => [app internal] load build definition from Dockerfile.app
 => ...continued output from Docker Compose

Note on Docker Compose

Docker Compose creates a new build for each service and architecture defined in the compose.yml. If you have a docker-compose.yml that defines 3 services, and you're building for 2 architectures, you will have 6 builds created in Depot.

Power of Depot for all tools

We've got a lot of requests to integrate Depot with other developer tools out there that need to build containers on demand. Tools like Dev Containers and goreleaser are great examples of this.

Before this command, these tools couldn't integrate with Depot. They call docker build or docker buildx build directly, and there was no way to configure them to use a different builder.

Now, with depot configure-docker, all tools using Docker or buildx internally can route their image builds to Depot. We have an integration guide and documentation for how this works with Dev Containers and docker build and docker buildx build in general.

We're excited about what this new command will unlock for folks! We will put out some new integration guides for other tools that need to build a Docker container on demand, so stay tuned for those. You can also hop in our Community Discord and let us know which tools you'd like us to integrate with next!