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

• 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

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

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

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

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

container-compose status

Stops all running service containers.

container-compose stop

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

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

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

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).

See LICENSE.