Use the default Compose Bridge transformation

Compose Bridge includes a built-in transformation that automatically converts your Compose configuration into a set of Kubernetes manifests.

Based on your compose.yaml file, it produces:

A Namespace so all your resources are isolated and don't conflict with resources from other deployments.
A ConfigMap with an entry for each and every config resource in your Compose application.
Deployments for application services. This ensures that the specified number of instances of your application are maintained in the Kubernetes cluster.
Services for ports exposed by your services, used for service-to-service communication.
Services for ports published by your services, with type LoadBalancer so that Docker Desktop will also expose the same port on the host.
Network policies to replicate the networking topology defined in your compose.yaml file.
PersistentVolumeClaims for your volumes, using hostpath storage class so that Docker Desktop manages volume creation.
Secrets with your secret encoded. This is designed for local use in a testing environment.

It also supplies a Kustomize overlay dedicated to Docker Desktop with:

Loadbalancer for services which need to expose ports on host.
A PersistentVolumeClaim to use the Docker Desktop storage provisioner desktop-storage-provisioner to handle volume provisioning more effectively.
A Kustomization.yaml file to link all the resources together.

If your Compose file defines a models section for a service, Compose Bridge automatically configures your deployment so your service can locate and use its models via Docker Model Runner.

For each declared model, the transformation injects two environment variables:

<MODELNAME>_URL: The endpoint for Docker Model Runner serving that model
<MODELNAME>_MODEL: The model’s name or identifier

You can optionally customize these variable names using endpoint_var and model_var.

The default transformation generates two different overlays - one for Docker Desktop whilst using a local instance of Docker Model Runner, and a model-runner overlay with all the relevant Kubernetes resources to deploy Docker Model Runner in a pod.

Environment	Endpoint
Docker Desktop	`http://host.docker.internal:12434/engines/v1/`
Kubernetes	`http://model-runner/engines/v1/`

For more details, see Use Model Runner.

To convert your Compose file using the default transformation:

console

$ docker compose bridge convert

Compose looks for a compose.yaml file inside the current directory and generates Kubernetes manifests.

Example output:

console

$ docker compose -f compose.yaml bridge convert
Kubernetes resource backend-deployment.yaml created
Kubernetes resource frontend-deployment.yaml created
Kubernetes resource backend-expose.yaml created
Kubernetes resource frontend-expose.yaml created
Kubernetes resource 0-my-project-namespace.yaml created
Kubernetes resource default-network-policy.yaml created
Kubernetes resource backend-service.yaml created
Kubernetes resource frontend-service.yaml created
Kubernetes resource kustomization.yaml created
Kubernetes resource backend-deployment.yaml created
Kubernetes resource frontend-deployment.yaml created
Kubernetes resource backend-service.yaml created
Kubernetes resource frontend-service.yaml created
Kubernetes resource kustomization.yaml created
Kubernetes resource model-runner-configmap.yaml created
Kubernetes resource model-runner-deployment.yaml created
Kubernetes resource model-runner-service.yaml created
Kubernetes resource model-runner-volume-claim.yaml created
Kubernetes resource kustomization.yaml created

All generated files are stored in the /out directory in your project.

Deploy the generated manifests

[!IMPORTANT]

Before you deploy your Compose Bridge transformations, make sure you have enabled Kubernetes in Docker Desktop.

Once the manifests are generated, deploy them to your local Kubernetes cluster:

console

$ kubectl apply -k out/overlays/desktop/

[!TIP]

You can convert and deploy your Compose project to a Kubernetes cluster from the Compose file viewer.

Make sure you are signed in to your Docker account, navigate to your container in the Containers view, and in the top-right corner select View configurations and then Convert and Deploy to Kubernetes.

Additional commands

Convert a compose.yaml file located in another directory:

console

$ docker compose -f <path-to-file>/compose.yaml bridge convert

To see all available flags, run:

console

$ docker compose bridge convert --help

Use the default Compose Bridge transformation