Compose: Do not autostart specific services

[samrocketman]

Use case

I have container services I use for troubleshooting inside of a docker network. I like to use, for example,

docker-compose run dns-troubleshoot /bin/bash

Which starts an interactive container for me inside the network of my service stack for deeper troubleshooting. Normally, the dns-troubleshoot service does not need to be started.

Recommended implementation

docker-compose already supports scale. Why not auto-skip services which have scale: 0 defined. No need for additional options.

Here's an example of what it could look like in the context of other services.

Duplicates

https://github.com/docker/compose/issues/1896 but I couldn't comment in there. I think I have something useful to add so I created an additional issue to share my thoughts. Unfortunately, I'm not a "docker collaborator" so I am excluded from participating in the discussion.

[jcsirot]

Hello @samrocketman Thank you for opening this ticket. We are going to evaluate the possibility to add this feature in a future Compose release

[samrocketman]

Neat, thanks for letting me know.

[jasonkenneth]

We have a one-time-setup service that runs some config on the host in the context of a developer downloading the project for the first time. We only want it to run when explicitly requested.

[ndeloof]

We could introduce a disabled boolean attribute on services, that would be ignored when explicit service name is part of the command. Just my 2 cents