Run docker-compose build in .gitlab-ci.yml

I have a .gitlab-ci.yml file which contains following:

image: docker:latest

services:
  - docker:dind

before_script:
  - docker info
  - docker-compose --version

buildJob:
  stage: build
  tags:
    - docker
  script:
    - docker-compose build

But in ci-log I receive message:

Docker also provides an official image: docker/compose

This is the ideal solution if you don't want to install it every pipeline.

Note that in the latest version of GitLab CI/Docker you will likely need to give privileged access to your GitLab CI Runner and configure/disable TLS. See Use docker-in-docker workflow with Docker executor

variables:
  DOCKER_HOST: tcp://docker:2375/
  DOCKER_DRIVER: overlay2

# Official docker compose image.
image:
  name: docker/compose:latest

services:
  - docker:dind

before_script:
  - docker version
  - docker-compose version

build:
  stage: build
  script:
    - docker-compose down
    - docker-compose build
    - docker-compose up tester-image

---

Note that in versions of docker-compose earlier than 1.25:

> Since the image uses docker-compose-entrypoint.sh as entrypoint you'll need to override it back to /bin/sh -c in your .gitlab-ci.yml. Otherwise your pipeline will fail with No such command: sh

    image:
      name: docker/compose:latest
      entrypoint: ["/bin/sh", "-c"]

Following the official documentation:

# .gitlab-ci.yml
image: docker
services:
  - docker:dind    
build:
  script:
    - apk add --no-cache docker-compose
    - docker-compose up -d

Sample docker-compose.yml:

version: "3.7"
services:
  foo:
    image: alpine
    command: sleep 3
  bar:
    image: alpine
    command: sleep 3

We personally do not follow this flow anymore, because you loose control about the running containers and they might end up running endless. This is because of the docker-in-docker executor. We developed a python-script as a workaround to kill all old containers in our CI, which can be found here. But I do not suggest to start containers like this anymore.

I created a simple docker container which has docker-compose installed on top of docker:latest. See https://hub.docker.com/r/tmaier/docker-compose/

Your .gitlab-ci.yml file would look like this:

image: tmaier/docker-compose:latest

services:
  - docker:dind

before_script:
  - docker info
  - docker-compose --version

buildJob:
  stage: build
  tags:
    - docker
  script:
    - docker-compose build

EDIT I added another answer providing a minimal example for a .gitlab-ci.yml configuration supporting docker-compose.

---

docker-compose can be installed as a Python package, which is not shipped with your image. The image you chose does not even provide an installation of Python:

$ docker run --rm -it docker sh
/ # find / -iname "python"
/ # 

Looking for Python gives an empty result. So you have to choose a different image, which fits to your needs and ideally has docker-compose installed or you maually create one.

The docker image you chose uses Alpine Linux. You can use it as a base for your own image or try a different one first if you are not familiar with Alpine Linux.

I had the same issue and created a Dockerfile in a public GitHub repository and connected it with my Docker Hub account and chose an automated build to build my image on each push to the GitHub repository. Then you can easily access your own images with the GitLab CI.

If you don't want to provide a custom docker image with docker-compose preinstalled, you can get it working by installing Python during build time. With Python installed you can finally install docker-compose ready for spinning up your containers.

image: docker:latest

services:
- docker:dind

before_script:
- apk add --update python py-pip python-dev && pip install docker-compose # install docker-compose
- docker version
- docker-compose version

test:
  cache:
    paths:
    - vendor/
  script:
  - docker-compose up -d
  - docker-compose exec -T php-fpm composer install --prefer-dist
  - docker-compose exec -T php-fpm vendor/bin/phpunit --coverage-text --colors=never --whitelist src/ tests/

Use docker-compose exec with -T if you receive this or a similar error:

$ docker-compose exec php-fpm composer install --prefer-dist
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/docker-compose", line 9, in <module>
    load_entry_point('docker-compose==1.8.1', 'console_scripts', 'docker-compose')()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/compose/cli/main.py", line 62, in main
    command()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/compose/cli/main.py", line 114, in perform_command
    handler(command, command_options)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/compose/cli/main.py", line 442, in exec_command
    pty.start()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/dockerpty/pty.py", line 338, in start
    io.set_blocking(pump, flag)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/dockerpty/io.py", line 32, in set_blocking
    old_flag = fcntl.fcntl(fd, fcntl.F_GETFL)
ValueError: file descriptor cannot be a negative integer (-1)
ERROR: Build failed: exit code 1

I think most of the above are helpful, however i needed to collectively apply them to solve this problem, below is the script which worked for me

I hope it works for you too

Also note, in your docker compose this is the format you have to provide for the image name

<registry base url>/<username>/<repo name>/<image name>:<tag>

image:
  name: docker/compose:latest
  entrypoint: ["/bin/sh", "-c"]

variables:
  DOCKER_HOST: tcp://docker:2375/
  DOCKER_DRIVER: overlay2
  
services:
  - docker:dind

stages:
- build_images

before_script:
  - docker version
  - docker-compose version
  - docker login -u $CI_REGISTRY_USER -p $CI_JOB_TOKEN $CI_REGISTRY

build:
  stage: build_images
  script:
    - docker-compose down
    - docker-compose build
    - docker-compose push

there is tiangolo/docker-with-compose which works:

image: tiangolo/docker-with-compose

stages:
  - build
  - test
  - release
  - clean

  
before_script:
  - docker login -u gitlab-ci-token -p $CI_BUILD_TOKEN registry.gitlab.com

build:
  stage: build
  script:
    - docker-compose -f docker-compose-ci.yml build --pull 


test1:
    stage: test
    script:
        - docker-compose -f docker-compose-ci.yml up -d
        - docker-compose -f docker-compose-ci.yml exec -T php ...

It really took me some time to get it working with Gitlab.com shared runners.

I'd like to say "use docker/compose:latest and that's it", but unfortunately I was not able to make it working, I was getting Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at tcp://docker:2375/. Is the docker daemon running? error even when all the env variables were set.

Neither I like an option to install five thousands of dependencies to install docker-compose via pip.

Fortunately, for the recent Alpine versions (3.10+) there is docker-compose package in Alpine repository. It means that @n2o's answer can be simplified to:

test:
  image: docker:19.03.0

  variables:
    DOCKER_DRIVER: overlay2
    # Create the certificates inside this directory for both the server
    # and client. The certificates used by the client will be created in
    # /certs/client so we only need to share this directory with the
    # volume mount in `config.toml`.
    DOCKER_TLS_CERTDIR: "/certs"

  services:
    - docker:19.03.0-dind

  before_script:
    - apk --no-cache add docker-compose      # <---------- Mind this line
    - docker info
    - docker-compose --version

  stage: test
  script:
      - docker-compose build

This worked perfectly from the first try for me. Maybe the reason other answers didn't was in some configuration of Gitlab.com shared runners, I don't know...

Alpine linux now has a docker-compose package in their "edge" branch, so you can install it this way in .gitlab-ci.yml

a-job-with-docker-compose:
  image: docker
  services:
    - docker:dind
  script:
    - apk add docker-compose --update-cache --repository http://dl-3.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing/ --allow-untrusted
    - docker-compose -v