Using compose as library

[prskr]

Hey,

there is currently a discussion in testcontainers/testcontainers-go#425 whether to use the Go API of docker-compose to replace the current process invocation version.

The most important question right now is: is github.com/docker/compose/v2/pkg or github.com/docker/compose/v2/cmd (or both) meant to be used as library and therefore semantically versioned regarding their public API?

We couldn't find any public documentation and were hence wondering if this is a supported scenario or if we'd be 'on our own' and we'd have to expect breaking API changes every now and then.

Is there any plan/information?

Thanks in advance

[ulyssessouza]

Hello @baez90.
TLDR: No.

For now Docker Compose is not designed as a library and we don't support it as such. So no guarantees on public functions stability. We will open an issue on the roadmap to discuss about this possibility.

For now, maybe just using Compose Go would fulfil your needs.

[prskr]

Mostly yes, but while doing a prototype I also used pkg/api and pkg/compose to actually ramp up containers without having to take care of the interpretation of a Project.

So I totally understand that it's of no interest to you to guarantee a stable API as this makes maintenance of this project so much easier 😄 but...out of curiosity: are there some aspects still under heavy development? I'm just wondering if a proper facade to decouple the public API of testcontainers-go of the one of compose could be enough to gracefully handle breaking changes or are there some fundamental changes to be expected?

Thanks a lot already for your support!

[glours]

👋 @baez90
We opened a roadmap issue to see if this is something needed by the community

[ndeloof]

closing this issue, we will collect feedback on docker/roadmap#387