How to give docker-compose alias to the new docker compose (v2) command?

Question

I noticed that docker-compose 1.x is gently being dropped in favor of the new v2:
https://www.docker.com/blog/announcing-compose-v2-general-availability/

So I then removed my docker-compose v1.x command (I think it was the way to go, but I cannot find the old documentation on how to install/uninstall docker-compose anymore):

$ sudo rm -rf /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Then I installed the new version according to the doc:

$ sudo apt-get install docker-compose-plugin

and voilà:

$ docker compose version
Docker Compose version v2.5.0

But all my scripts which used to call docker-compose (with a dash) are no more working. Obviously.

Hence my question; how could I alias the new compose command to docker-compose?

Is it sufficient to add this line to by .bashrc file?

$ echo "alias docker-compose='docker compose'" >> ~/.bashrc
$ source ~/.bashrc

Answer 1

The absolute easiest solution is to make an alias, like you state in your question:

alias docker-compose='docker compose'

This will work without any issue.

Also, I would recommend installing Docker Compose using the apt package docker-compose-plugin, and not by manually installing with curl, unless you have a very good reason to do so.

By installing with apt (which is the recommended way on Ubuntu), you ensure that you can update Docker Compose automatically with new Docker releases using apt upgrade or even with unattended upgrades.

Answer 2

Adding an alias to .bashrc will work for most cases, but for some scripts may not work.

IMHO creating a small script named docker-compose to your PATH that just passes arguments to docker compose is a better way to solve the problem.

This answer might help: https://stackoverflow.com/a/72187587/11418220

Answer 3

It was not 100% clear to me but there are two ways to install compose on the documentation:

1. the former, by apt install docker-compose-plugin

2. a second way (user either the first way or the second, but not both) by manually downloading the binary with curl but it misses some details I think, especially the newly created folder is not in the default path. Here's how I proceeded to install it globally (i.e. in /usr/local/...):

$ sudo apt-get remove --purge docker-compose-plugin

$ sudo su

# DOCKER_CONFIG_CLI="/usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins"

# mkdir -p $DOCKER_CONFIG_CLI

# curl -SL https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.5.0/docker-compose-linux-x86_64 -o $DOCKER_CONFIG_CLI/docker-compose

# chmod +x $DOCKER_CONFIG_CLI/docker-compose

# cd /usr/local/bin

# mv docker-compose docker-compose_v1 # only if you had a previous docker-compose version!

# ln -s /usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose

# exit

$ which docker-compose
/usr/local/bin/docker-compose

or in one shot:

#!/bin/bash

apt-get update \
&& apt-get remove --purge docker-compose-plugin \
&& DOCKER_CONFIG_CLI="/usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins" \
&& mkdir -p $DOCKER_CONFIG_CLI \
&& curl -SL https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.5.0/docker-compose-linux-x86_64 -o $DOCKER_CONFIG_CLI/docker-compose \
&& chmod +x $DOCKER_CONFIG_CLI/docker-compose \
&& cd /usr/local/bin \
&& mv docker-compose docker-compose_v1 \
&& ln -s /usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose \
&& which docker-compose

Then you got the two ways of calling it, the transition is smoother:

$ docker compose version
Docker Compose version v2.5.0

$ docker-compose --version
# or: docker-compose version
Docker Compose version v2.5.0