Setting COMPOSE_COMPATIBILITY flag changes behavior of separators and break Compose v2 integration

[obelix74]

Expected Behaviour

The separators for docker container names when using docker compose should be uniform, either _ or -.

Actual Behaviour

Currently, testcontainers-node has no way to set --compatibility on the docker compose client. I have two environments, one in which docker-compose is installed and in one where docker-compose is not installed. In the environment where docker-compose is installed, an env variable COMPOSE_COMPATIBILITY is set. This changes the separators from - to _ for docker containers.

With Docker version 2.29.2-desktop.2, there is no way to access docker-compose (it seems to have been removed) and the only separator supported is -.

Testcontainer Logs
Attached two sets of logs.WithoutComposeComptability.txt
WithComposeCompatibility.txt

Steps to Reproduce
@kiview was able to reproduce this with COMPOSE_COMPATIBILITY turned on.

Environment Information

• Operating System: Mac desktop and Linux
• Docker Version: 2.29.2-desktop.2 on Mac. docker-compose version 1.28.2, build 67630359 and Docker Compose version v2.18.1 in Linux
• Node version: 20.17.0
• Testcontainers version: 10.13.1

[obelix74]

A workaround is to set COMPOSE_COMPATIBILITY to false explicitly.

[kiview]

Thanks @obelix74 for getting involved in the debugging work in Slack.

I don't think we will add support for COMPOSE_COMPATIBILITY in any of the TC languages, but I wonder how we can provide a better DX around this situation still.

Some ideas:

• Document that COMPOSE_COMPATIBILITY is not supported (this will likely lead to issues for other TC languages as well)
• When using Compose v2 integration, check the value for COMPOSE_COMPATIBILITY and with clear error if set to true?

[obelix74]

One way to solve it might be to add an option that allows clients to enable --compatibility. The Java client seems to have .withOption("--compatibility"). This will force the usage of _ everywhere until docker compose version 1 is purged completely.