container-compose

A lightweight alternative to docker-compose for macOS that manages containers using Apple's native container runtime instead of Docker.

Prerequisites

• macOS with the Apple container runtime installed and available on $PATH

• The container system must be started:

  container system start

• A docker-compose.yml file in the current working directory

Installation

git clone https://github.com/dgodd/container-compose
cd container-compose
go build -o container-compose .
# optional: place on your PATH

Usage

All commands read docker-compose.yml from the current directory by default. Use -f <file> to specify a different compose file.

container-compose -f path/to/docker-compose.yml start

container-compose start

Creates and starts all services defined in docker-compose.yml. For each service:

• If a container with that name already exists and is running, it is left alone.
• If a container exists but is stopped, it is started with container start.
• If no container exists, one is created and started with container run.

If the image tag of an existing container differs from what's specified in docker-compose.yml, a warning is printed immediately and repeated in a summary at the end.

container-compose start

container-compose status (or ps, ls)

Prints the status of each service's container (e.g., running, or an error if the container does not exist).

container-compose status

container-compose stop

Stops all running service containers.

container-compose stop

container-compose logs

Prints or streams logs from all service containers. Supports the following flags:

Flag	Description
-f, --follow	Follow log output (stream)
-n N	Show only the last N lines

container-compose logs
container-compose logs -f
container-compose logs -n 50

Supported docker-compose.yml fields

Field	Example	Behavior
services.<name>.image	redis:7-alpine	Required. Full image reference.
services.<name>.platform	linux/amd64	Translated to --arch amd64
services.<name>.environment	- FOO=bar	Passed as --env flags. Accepts array or hash form.
services.<name>.volumes	- ./data:/data	Relative paths resolved from CWD
services.<name>.ports	- 3306:3306	Passed as -p flags
services.<name>.command	- mysqld	Appended as positional args after the image
services.<name>.entrypoint	docker-entrypoint.sh	Passed as --entrypoint flag
services.<name>.deploy.resources.limits.memory	2G	Passed as --memory

Fields like working_dir, restart, and networks are parsed from YAML but silently ignored at runtime.

How it works

The tool shells out to Apple's container binary with commands like:

container inspect <name>
container run --detach --name <name> <image>
container start <name>
container stop <name>

Containers are created with --rm so they are automatically removed when stopped.

Container names are prefixed with the working directory name to avoid clashes between projects (e.g., myproject-db).

License

See LICENSE.