Compose Profiles

Compose Profiles

profiles: in a compose.yml service marks it as opt-in — real Compose only starts it when you activate the profile with --profile. wip has no --profile flag, so profile-gated services are parsed, validated, and then skipped.

Behavior

services:
  app:
    image: myapp:dev
  db:
    image: postgres:16
  mailcatcher:
    image: sj26/mailcatcher
    profiles: [dev-tools]
  seed:
    image: myapp:dev
    command: bundle exec rails db:seed
    profiles: [tools]

wip up -d     # starts db and app. mailcatcher and seed are ignored.

Profile-gated services are:

• parsed and validated like any other — an unsupported key in one is still an error
• included in depends_on validation and cycle detection
• excluded from wip up, wip stop, wip down, and wip up --watch
• excluded from image builds (a profile-gated service with build: is never built)
• absent from wip config's dependencies: output

This matches what real Compose does with an unactivated profile: the service exists in the model but isn't part of the run.

profiles: must be an array of strings:

compose.yml: services.mailcatcher.profiles must be an array of strings

compose.service may not be profile-gated

The primary service is the one thing wip always starts, so pointing compose.service at a profile-gated service is rejected up front rather than failing later with a confusing "no matching service" message:

compose.service 'seed' is gated behind profiles: in compose.yml, but wip has no --profile flag
to activate one — pick a service with no profiles: or remove profiles: from it

A startable service may not depend on a gated one

services:
  app:
    depends_on: [mailcatcher]
  mailcatcher:
    profiles: [dev-tools]

compose.yml: services.app depends_on 'mailcatcher', gated behind profiles: (dev-tools) wip
never activates (no --profile flag)

Real Compose treats this as an invalid model too, since the dependency would never start. A gated service depending on another gated service is fine — neither runs.

Working with a profiled compose.yml

If your compose file uses profiles heavily, you have three options:

1. Leave them. Gated services are simply skipped, which is usually what you want in a dev container workflow — they exist for CI, seeding, or one-off tooling.
2. Run the gated thing yourself. Since it isn't managed by wip, use wslc run directly, or add an interaction with type: run:

   interaction:
     seed:
       type: run
       command: bundle exec rails db:seed

3. Use mode: compose. The external tool has its own --profile support, and wip just bridges to it.

Related

• Compose File Support
• Compose Depends On
• Compose Native Mode