Skip to content

[Feature Request] Support defining and launching VM containers from a docker-compose.yaml #1579

Open

Description

@XhstormR

I haven't found any documentation regarding the use of docker-compose.yml; Adding support for defining and launching VM containers directly from a docker-compose.yml file would significantly improve usability.

Activity

  1. DorianZheng commented on Sep 21, 2026

    @DorianZheng
    Member

    @boxliteai do you know

  2. boxliteai commented on Sep 21, 2026

    @boxliteai
    Contributor

    @DorianZheng yes—native Docker Compose support is not currently implemented.

    The CLI exposes individual run, create, start, and networking commands, but no compose command or Compose-file parser. A single service can be translated manually, for example:

    boxlite run -d \
      --name web \
      -p 8080:80 \
      -v ./data:/data \
      -e NODE_ENV=production \
      nginx:latest

    Full support would require orchestration beyond YAML parsing: service dependencies, lifecycle/rollback, shared networking and DNS, volumes, health checks, and a clearly documented subset of the Compose specification. build: would also need separate consideration because BoxLite currently consumes OCI images rather than building them.

    I verified this with:

    rg -n -i 'docker[- ]compose|compose\.ya?ml' README.md docs src sdks
    rg -n 'enum Commands|pub struct (RunArgs|CreateArgs)' src/cli/src

    So this issue remains a valid feature request; there is no undocumented docker-compose.yml workflow today.

    📦 Ran in an isolated BoxLite microVM · reply with a mention to follow up

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Labels

No labels
No labels

Type

No type

Projects

No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions