Error when using array of env_file in docker-compose.yml

[Tichael]

What happened?
When trying to use multiple env files in docker-compose.yml, DevPod throw an error saying:

[11:40:48] info devcontainer up: load docker compose project: validating /Users/tichael/Projects/test_devcontainer/docker-compose.yml: services.devcontainer.env_file.0 must be a string
[11:40:48] error Try enabling Debug mode under Settings to see a more verbose output
[11:40:48] fatal run agent command: Process exited with status 1

What did you expect to happen instead?
I expected that devpod would have no problem with it since the latest Docker Compose format support this (see official documentation here) and creating a dev container with the same files from VS Code works without issue.

How can we reproduce the bug? (as minimally and precisely as possible)
Create a folder with three files:

• .devcontainer.json
• docker-compose.yml
• default.env

File content:

• .devcontainer.json:

{
  "dockerComposeFile": "docker-compose.yml",
  "service": "devcontainer",
  "workspaceFolder": "/workspace"
}

• docker-compose.yml:

services:
  devcontainer:
    image: mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/base:ubuntu
    env_file:
      - path: ./default.env
        required: true
      - path: ./.env
        required: false
    volumes:
      - .:/workspace:cached

• default.env:

MY_ENV_VALUE=default

Local Environment:

• DevPod Version: v0.5.16
• Operating System: macOS Sonoma 14.5
• ARCH of the OS: ARM64

DevPod Provider:
Local Docker installation (Docker Desktop v4.31.0, Docker Engine v26.1.4, Docker Compose v2.27.1-desktop.1)

Anything else we need to know?
Like I said earlier, creating the dev container with Visual Studio Code works without any issue. So I don't know what difference DevPod is doing with its Docker Compose implementation.

[pascalbreuninger]

Hi @Tichael, thanks for opening the issue. We'll take a look but it might take a while as docker-compose based workspaces aren't our focus at the moment

[air-hand]

same here.

It seems the cause is used old compose-spec/compose-go package to validate the docker-compose.yaml file. https://github.com/loft-sh/devpod/blob/main/go.mod#L10

the new env_file spec is supported by compose-go v2.0.0 and later. https://github.com/compose-spec/compose-go/releases/tag/v2.0.0