page_title: Installing Compose page_description: How to install Docker Compose page_keywords: compose, orchestration, install, installation, docker, documentation
To install Compose, you'll need to install Docker first. You'll then install
Compose with a curl command.
First, install Docker version 1.6 or greater:
To install Compose, run the following commands:
curl -L https:/docker/compose/releases/download/1.3.0rc2/docker-compose-`uname -s`-`uname -m` > /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
Note: If you get a "Permission denied" error, your
/usr/local/bindirectory probably isn't writable and you'll need to install Compose as the superuser. Runsudo -i, then the two commands above, thenexit.
Optionally, you can also install command completion for the bash shell.
Compose is available for OS X and 64-bit Linux. If you're on another platform, Compose can also be installed as a Python package:
$ sudo pip install -U docker-compose
No further steps are required; Compose should now be successfully installed.
You can test the installation by running docker-compose --version.
If you're coming from Compose 1.2 or earlier, you'll need to remove or migrate your existing containers after upgrading Compose. This is because, as of version 1.3, Compose uses Docker labels to keep track of containers, and so they need to be recreated with labels added.
If Compose detects containers that were created without labels, it will refuse to run so that you don't end up with two sets of them. If you want to keep using your existing containers (for example, because they have data volumes you want to preserve) you can migrate them with the following command:
docker-compose migrate-to-labels
Alternatively, if you're not worried about keeping them, you can remove them - Compose will just create new ones.
docker rm -f myapp_web_1 myapp_db_1 ...