Preventing development containers from running in production

Question

I have a docker-compose.yml file that includes a container for API mocks as well as phpmyadmin and mongo-express containers none of which should be started in my production environment.

I already have seperate .env files for production and development. Is it possible to use variables from the active .env file to disable a container?

Here is my docker-compose.yml:

services:
    mysql:
        build: ./docker/mysql
        command: --default-authentication-plugin=mysql_native_password
        container_name: mysql
        entrypoint: sh -c "/usr/local/bin/docker-entrypoint.sh --character-set-server=utf8mb4 --collation-server=utf8mb4_unicode_ci"
        environment:
            - MYSQL_DATABASE=${MYSQL_DATABASE}
            - MYSQL_USER=${MYSQL_USERNAME}
            - MYSQL_PASSWORD=${MYSQL_PASSWORD}
            - MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD=yes
            - MYSQL_ONETIME_PASSWORD=yes
        ports:
            - 3306:3306
        restart: unless-stopped
        volumes:
            - ./data/mysql:/var/lib/mysql

    phpmyadmin:
        container_name: phpmyadmin
        environment:
            - PMA_HOST=mysql
        image: phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin
        ports:
            - 8080:80

    mongo:
        build: ./docker/mongo
        container_name: mongo
        environment:
            - MONGO_INITDB_DATABASE=${MONGO_DATABASE}
            - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME=${MONGO_USERNAME}
            - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD=${MONGO_PASSWORD}
        ports:
            - 27017:27017
        restart: unless-stopped
        volumes:
            - ./data/mongo:/data/db

    mongo-express:
        build: ./docker/mongo-express
        container_name: mongo-express
        depends_on:
            - mongo
        environment:
            - ME_CONFIG_BASICAUTH_PASSWORD=redacted
            - ME_CONFIG_BASICAUTH_USERNAME=username
            - ME_CONFIG_MONGODB_ADMINUSERNAME=${MONGO_USERNAME}
            - ME_CONFIG_MONGODB_ADMINPASSWORD=${MONGO_PASSWORD}
        ports:
            - 8081:8081

    redis:
        build: ./docker/redis
        container_name: redis
        ports:
            - 6379:6379
        restart: unless-stopped
        volumes:
            - ./data/redis:/data

    mock-apis:
        build: ./docker/mock-apis
        container_name: mock-apis
        command: >
            /initscript.bash
        ports:
            - 81:80
        volumes:
            - ./mock-apis:/home/nodejs

    php-fpm:
        build: 
            context: ./docker/php-fpm
            args: 
                HOST_UID: ${HOST_UID}
        command: >
            /initscript.bash
        container_name: php-fpm
        restart: unless-stopped
        depends_on:
            - mongo
            - mysql
            - redis
        volumes:
            - ./laravel:/var/www/

    nginx:
        build: ./docker/nginx
        container_name: nginx
        depends_on:
            - php-fpm
        ports:
            - 80:80
        restart: unless-stopped
        volumes:
            - ./laravel:/var/www/

version: "3"

Answer 1

I'm using profiles to scope my services. If I want to use PhpMyAdmin only in dev I add this profile to the service:

phpmyadmin:
    container_name: phpmyadmin
    environment:
        - PMA_HOST=mysql
    image: phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin
    ports:
        - 8080:80
    profiles: ["dev"]

So now I have to tell to docker compose if I want to use the dev profile. Else it will not start.

You can use one of these command (with this way you have to type --profile your_profil for each profile):

$ docker-compose --profile dev up -d
$ docker-compose --profile dev --profile profil2 up -d     <- for multiple profiles

Or the cleaner way you can separate your services with a comma:

$ COMPOSE_PROFILES=dev,profil2 docker-compose up -d

Services without a profiles attribute will always be enabled.

Care about when you stop your services you have to specify the profile too:

$ COMPOSE_PROFILES=dev docker-compose down