[BUG] Unhelpful warning "No services to build" with `docker compose up`

[snowdroppe]

Description

Commit c89b8a2 added a warning log "No services to build" when build is run without any services to build.

This also affects docker compose up even if no build directive exists within docker-compose.yml. Running up without the image present in the platform cache (and pull_policy: missing, which is default if unset), results in a pull from the image directive (if possible) and starts the container(s).

Subsequent runs of up with a cached image result in the unhelpful (albeit accurate) warning message "WARN[0000] No services to build".

I imagine this behaviour is due to compose running build as a fallback to pull, even if the image is cached and --build not specified.

Running docker compose up --no-build results in no warning as expected, but I would expect this to be default behaviour if --build is not specified and no build directive exists.

Obviously, pre 5.0 behaviour had no such warning (even if the internal calls to build were identical).

Steps To Reproduce

docker-compose.yml:

services:
  app:
    image: hello-world:latest

1. docker compose up (assuming the image is not cached)

root@host /srv/myapp # docker compose up
[+] up 0/2
[+] up 4/4ello-world:latest [⠀] Pulling                                                                                                                                                                 2.0s
 ✔ Image hello-world:latest Pulled                                                                                                                                                                      2.1s
   ✔ 17eec7bbc9d7           Pull complete                                                                                                                                                               0.5s
 ✔ Network myapp_default    Created                                                                                                                                                                     0.0s
 ✔ Container myapp-app-1    Created                                                                                                                                                                     0.0s
Attaching to app-1
app-1  |
app-1  | Hello from Docker!
app-1  | This message shows that your installation appears to be working correctly.
...

2. docker compose up (assuming the image is cached)

root@host /srv/myapp # docker compose up
WARN[0000] No services to build
Attaching to app-1
app-1  |
app-1  | Hello from Docker!
app-1  | This message shows that your installation appears to be working correctly.
...

Compose Version

Docker Compose version 5.0.1

Docker Environment

Client:
 Version:    29.1.3
 Context:    default
 Debug Mode: false
 Plugins:
  compose: Docker Compose (Docker Inc.)
    Version:  5.0.1
    Path:     /usr/lib/docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose

Server:
 Containers: 1
  Running: 1
  Paused: 0
  Stopped: 0
 Images: 1
 Server Version: 29.1.3
 Storage Driver: overlay2
  Backing Filesystem: extfs
  Supports d_type: true
  Using metacopy: true
  Native Overlay Diff: false
  userxattr: false
 Logging Driver: local
 Cgroup Driver: systemd
 Cgroup Version: 2
 Plugins:
  Volume: local
  Network: bridge host ipvlan macvlan null overlay
  Log: awslogs fluentd gcplogs gelf journald json-file local splunk syslog
 CDI spec directories:
  /etc/cdi
  /var/run/cdi
 Swarm: inactive
 Runtimes: io.containerd.runc.v2 runc
 Default Runtime: runc
 Init Binary: docker-init
 containerd version: 75cb2b7193e4e490e9fbdc236c0e811ccaba3376.m
 runc version:
 init version: de40ad0
 Security Options:
  seccomp
   Profile: builtin
  cgroupns
 Kernel Version: 6.16.8-arch1-1
 Operating System: Arch Linux
 OSType: linux
 Architecture: x86_64
 CPUs: 4
 Total Memory: 7.749GiB
 Name: host
 ID: affaf1ab-b8ff-4f55-8bf3-cd402c21bad6
 Docker Root Dir: /var/lib/docker
 Debug Mode: false
 Experimental: false
 Insecure Registries:
  ::1/128
  127.0.0.0/8
 Live Restore Enabled: false
 Firewall Backend: iptables

Anything else?

No response

[TomKeur]

I'm facing the same issue, was just checking GitHub issues before creating my own.

Thanks for reporting 👍

[snowdroppe]

Yeah, I'm relatively certain it was a well intentioned addition with unforeseen consequences. I'll let someone more knowledge on the project weigh in (: