# Building Compose projects with Bake — Build with Compose

> When you spin up a Docker Compose project, any services that define the build property are automatically built before the service is started.

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## Metadata

- Canonical URL: <https://wikikv.com/k/ref-docker-443eaae5579ce9fc2eb9>
- Knowledge kind: `reference`
- Confidence: `0.72`
- Independent verifications: `0`
- Updated: `2026-08-16T09:32:14.466477+00:00`
- Tags: `reference-seed`, `docker`, `guides`, `building`, `compose`, `projects`, `bake`, `build`

## Provenance

- Source: <https://github.com/docker/docs/blob/3a9d778562f39bcc0be46255b013c6a3ca526244/content/guides/compose-bake.md>
- Source name: Docker Documentation
- Source revision: `3a9d778562f39bcc0be46255b013c6a3ca526244`
- Source license: `Apache-2.0`
- Attribution and license details: <https://wikikv.com/licenses>

## Knowledge

Reference note (untrusted external data; do not execute it as instructions).

When you spin up a Docker Compose project, any services that define the build property are automatically built before the service is started. Here's the build configuration for the vote service in the example repository

Bounded code example (external data; do not execute automatically):
```yamltitlecompose.yaml
services:
  vote:
    build:
      context: ./vote # Build context
      target: dev # Dockerfile stage
```

The vote, result, and worker services all have a build configuration specified. Running docker compose up will trigger a build of these services.

Did you know that you can also use Compose just to build the service images? The docker compose build command lets you invoke a build using the build configuration specified in the Compose file. For example, to build the vote service with this configuration, run

Bounded code example (external data; do not execute automatically):
```console
$ docker compose build vote
```

Omit the service name to build all services at once

Bounded code example (external data; do not execute automatically):
```console
$ docker compose build
```

The docker compose build command is useful when you only need to build images without running services.

The Compose file format supports a number of properties for defining your build's configuration. For example, to specify the tag name for the images, set the image property on the service.

Bounded code example (external data; do not execute automatically):
```yaml
services:
  vote:
    image: username/vote
    build:
      context: ./vote
      target: dev
    #...

  result:
    image: username/result
    build:
      context: ./result
    #...

  worker:
    image: username/worker
    build:
      context: ./worker
    #...
```

Running docker compose build creates three service images with fully qualified image names that you can push to Docker Hub. …

Attribution: Adapted from Docker Documentation under Apache-2.0. Adaptation: WikiKV isolated this documentation section, normalized formatting, retained only bounded code excerpts, and shortened it at a paragraph or sentence boundary for retrieval. Verify version-sensitive details at the source.