Description

Hey folks,

I’d like to bring up a long-standing feature request, originally from issue #6093, which dates back over five years. Since then, development practices have advanced, including enabling services to interact with each other during the docker-compose build step.

The problem is still a major pain point: it's impossible for a service's build process to depend on other services in the same Compose file being up and running (unless you start them one by one).

The Proposal: build.depends_on

Let's add a depends_on key inside the build block. It's declarative, simple, and fits right into the existing Compose structure IMO.

services:
  frontend:
    build:
      context: ./frontend
      # THIS IS THE NEW PART
      depends_on:
        - database
    # This is the existing runtime dependency
    depends_on:
      - database

  database:
    image: mongo:latest
    # ...

How it would work:

1. You run docker-compose build frontend.
2. Compose sees build.depends_on: [database].
3. It spins up the database service first.
4. It then runs the frontend build. The build container can now successfully fetch data from http://database:27017.
5. When the build finishes (success or fail), Compose automatically tears down the database service.

No more build.sh wrappers or makefiles. It's all self-contained in the compose.yml.

Why this is a huge deal

This isn't an edge case anymore; it's central to many modern workflows.

• Static Site Generators (Next.js, Gatsby, Astro): You need to build your static site by pulling content from a headless CMS (like PayloadCMS or a custom API) running in another container. Right now, this is impossible without a wrapper script or makefile.

• API Client Generation: Your frontend build needs to generate a TypeScript client by hitting the /openapi.json endpoint of your backend service. The build fails because the backend isn't running.

• Database-driven builds: You want to bake something into your image that requires a live DB connection, like generating models from a schema or pre-populating a search index.

The Bottom Line

Adding build.depends_on would be a massive quality-of-life improvement. It solves a real, common problem. It makes Compose a more complete tool for modern webdevelopment.

Would love to get this on the roadmap. What do you all think?