Run docker compose alpha --help and Compose is upfront about what that word means:
EXPERIMENTAL:
docker compose alpha is an experimental feature.
Experimental features provide early access to product functionality.
These features may change between releases without warning, or can be
removed from a future release.
Not a beta, not a preview with a stable target date. A command under alpha can change its flags, its output format, or disappear entirely in the next release, with no deprecation notice. Build a script around one and a routine docker compose upgrade can break it silently.
Alpha is a real graduation path, not just a label
The biggest proof: docker compose watch (Tip #11, and this week’s Tip #86) started life as docker compose alpha watch in January 2023. It moved to the top level as plain docker compose watch that September, and the alpha watch alias itself wasn’t removed until January 2024, four months later. One of Compose’s most-used features spent a full year under alpha before the label came off for good.
docker compose publish (Tip #9) took the same path out of alpha:
docker compose publish mycompany/app:v1.0 # the stable, documented command
docker compose alpha publish mycompany/app:v1.0 # still runs today, under its old name
The same move watch made. Don’t read stability into a command still answering under alpha. Read the --help output instead.
What’s under alpha right now
Two commands currently live there:
docker compose alpha viz
docker compose alpha generate [containers...]
viz reads a Compose file and prints a Graphviz graph of the service dependency graph, useful the moment a stack grows past a handful of services and depends_on stops being readable at a glance:
digraph "myapp" {
"db" [style="filled" label=<<font point-size="15">db</font>>];
"api" [style="filled" label=<<font point-size="15">api</font>>];
"api" -> "db";
}
generate runs the other direction: point it at already-running containers and it writes back a Compose file, useful for adopting Compose on a stack that only ever existed as a pile of docker run commands (Tip #28 has a worked example). Both deserve their own tip; this one’s just the map.
Pro tip: check the list, it changes
docker compose alpha --help is the source of truth for what’s in there this release, not this post. Commands move out (like publish did) and new ones move in. generate also takes --format json today if you’d rather pipe its output into JSON-based tooling than YAML. Read the disclaimer once, then treat the --help output as current.