Add optional auto-confirm label on volumes

[qianlongzt]

Description

In CI/CD workflows, changes to volumes may trigger interactive confirmation prompts, which can break automation and require manual intervention.

For example, when an existing volume does not match the Compose specification, Docker may prompt:

Volume "... " exists but doesn't match the Compose specification in the Compose file. Recreate (data will be lost)?

To support non-interactive environments, it would be useful to provide an option to automatically confirm volume recreation in such cases, while keeping the default interactive behavior unchanged.

This behavior is controlled via a per-volume label, allowing precise control when multiple volumes are defined in a single Compose file. The label does not apply globally.

Example

services:
  app:
    image: alpine
    volumes:
      - my_vol:/my_vol
      - no_recreate_label:/no_recreate_label

volumes:
  my_vol:
    driver: local
    driver_opts:
      device: tmpfs
      o: size=1k,uid=65530,gid=0,mode=0700,noexec
      type: tmpfs
    labels:
+      com.docker.compose.volume.recreate-when-spec-updated: "true"
      foo: bar
  nfs:
    driver: local
    driver_opts:
      type: nfs
      o: addr=XXX,nfsvers=4.2,soft,timeo=600,retrans=2,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576
      device: :/storage2/sonarr/media/
    labels:
+      com.docker.compose.volume.recreate-when-spec-updated: "true"
  no_recreate_label:
    labels:
      foo: bar

use case

1. Shared tmpfs mounts between services
2. Volume mounts that can be safely deleted without removing the underlying data (e.g., NFS volumes)

kimdre/doco-cd#1130 kimdre/doco-cd#1267

[vaguul]

Not a maintainer, but recent Compose builds already have a non-interactive confirmation flag for some commands: -y, --yes (Assume "yes" as answer to all prompts and run non-interactively). It is documented on docker compose up / create in the current reference.

Could you check whether this use case is already covered by:

docker compose up -y

or, for a create step:

docker compose create -y

If the volume-recreate prompt still appears even with -y, then this issue can probably be narrowed to "the existing yes flag does not cover the volume mismatch prompt" rather than needing a new option. That would be easier to reproduce and fix without changing the CLI surface.

[glours]

hey @qianlongzt
The issue as filed seems already covered by the existing --yes flag, it does not establish why Compose needs a new volume-specific auto-confirm mechanism instead of using the existing non-interactive mode.

[qianlongzt]

@glours @vaguul
In Docker Compose, there may be multiple volumes. Some volumes can be safely removed automatically, while others cannot. Implementing this through labels allows precise control over which volumes are eligible for automatic deletion.

[glours]

@qianlongzt Ok this is not what the issue describe here. Can you update it and add a reproducible example, please?

[qianlongzt]

@glours Updated the description and added clarification about per-volume scope.