Docker Compose build properties

• 08/12/2019
• 4 minutes to read
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In addition to the properties that control individual Docker projects, described in Container Tools build properties, you can also customize how Visual Studio builds your Docker Compose projects by setting the Docker Compose properties that MSBuild uses to build your solution. You can also control how the Visual Studio debugger runs your Docker Compose apps by setting file labels in Docker Compose configuration files.

How to set the MSBuild properties

To set the value of a property, edit the project file. For Docker Compose properties, this project file is the one with a .dcproj extension, unless otherwise indicated in the table in the next section. For example, suppose you want to specify to launch the browser when you start debugging. You can set the DockerLaunchAction property in the .dcproj project file as follows.

<PropertyGroup>
   <DockerLaunchAction>LaunchBrowser</DockerLaunchAction>
</PropertyGroup>

You can add the property setting to an existing PropertyGroup element, or if there isn't one, create a new PropertyGroup element.

Docker Compose MSBuild properties

The following table shows the MSBuild properties available for Docker Compose projects.

Example

If you change the location of the docker compose files, by setting DockerComposeBaseFilePath to a relative path, then you also need to make sure that the build context is changed so that it references the solution folder. For example, if your docker compose file is a folder called DockerComposeFiles, then docker compose file should set the build context to ".." or "../..", depending on where it is relative to the solution folder.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project ToolsVersion="15.0" Sdk="Microsoft.Docker.Sdk">
  <PropertyGroup Label="Globals">
    <ProjectVersion>2.1</ProjectVersion>
    <DockerTargetOS>Windows</DockerTargetOS>
    <ProjectGuid>154022c1-8014-4e9d-bd78-6ff46670ffa4</ProjectGuid>
    <DockerLaunchAction>LaunchBrowser</DockerLaunchAction>
    <DockerServiceUrl>{Scheme}://{ServiceIPAddress}{ServicePort}</DockerServiceUrl>
    <DockerServiceName>webapplication1</DockerServiceName>
    <DockerComposeBaseFilePath>DockerComposeFiles\mydockercompose</DockerComposeBaseFilePath>
    <AdditionalComposeFilePaths>AdditionalComposeFiles\myadditionalcompose.yml</AdditionalComposeFilePaths>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <None Include="DockerComposeFiles\mydockercompose.override.yml">
      <DependentUpon>DockerComposeFiles\mydockercompose.yml</DependentUpon>
    </None>
    <None Include="DockerComposeFiles\mydockercompose.yml" />
    <None Include=".dockerignore" />
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>

The mydockercompose.yml file should look like this, with the build context set to the relative path of the solution folder (in this case, ..).

version: '3.4'

services:
  webapplication1:
    image: ${DOCKER_REGISTRY-}webapplication1
    build:
      context: ..
      dockerfile: WebApplication1\Dockerfile

Docker Compose file labels

You can also override certain settings by placing a file named docker-compose.vs.debug.yml (for Debug configuration) or docker-compose.vs.release.yml (for Release configuration) in the same directory as your docker-compose.yml file. In this file, you can specify settings as follows:

services:
  webapplication1:
    labels:
      com.microsoft.visualstudio.debuggee.workingdirectory: "C:\\my_app_folder"

Use double quotes around the values, as in the preceding example, and use the backslash as an escape character for backslashes in paths.

Customize the app startup process

You can run a command or custom script before launching your app by using the entrypoint setting, and making it dependent on the configuration. For example, if you need to set up a certificate only in Debug mode by running update-ca-certificates, but not in Release mode, you could add the following code only in docker-compose.vs.debug.yml:

services:
  webapplication1:
    entrypoint: "sh -c 'update-ca-certificates && tail -f /dev/null'"
    labels:
      ...

If you omit the docker-compose.vs.release.yml or docker-compose.vs.debug.yml then Visual Studio generates one based on default settings.

Next steps

For information on MSBuild properties generally, see MSBuild Properties.

See also

Container Tools build properties

Container Tools launch settings

MSBuild reserved and well-known properties