[docker-compose] How to upgrade docker-compose to latest version

I have installed docker-compose using the command

sudo apt install docker-compose

It installed docker-compose version 1.8.0 and build unknown

I need the latest version of docker-compose or at least a version of 1.9.0

Can anyone please let me know what approach I should take to upgrade it or uninstall and re-install the latest version.

I have checked the docker website and can see that they are recommending this to install the latest version'

sudo curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.21.0/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m) -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

But before that, I have to uninstall the present version, which can be done using the command

sudo rm /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

but this can be used only when the installation was done using curl. I am not sure if the installation was done by curl as I have used

sudo apt install docker-compose

Please let me know what should I do now to uninstall and re-install the docker-compose.

This question is related to docker-compose

The answer is


If you tried sudo apt-get remove docker-compose and get E: Unable to locate package docker-compose, try this method :

This command must return a result, in order to check it is installed here :

ls -l /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Remove the old version :

sudo rm -rf docker-compose

Download the last version (check official repo : docker/compose/releases) :

sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.24.0/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

(replace 1.24.0 if needed)

Finally, apply executable permissions to the binary:

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Check version :

docker-compose -v

Based on @eric-johnson's answer, I'm currently using this in a script:

#!/bin/bash
compose_version=$(curl https://api.github.com/repos/docker/compose/releases/latest | jq .name -r)
output='/usr/local/bin/docker-compose'
curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/$compose_version/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m) -o $output
chmod +x $output
echo $(docker-compose --version)

it grabs the latest version from the GitHub api.


The easiest way to have a permanent and sustainable solution for the Docker Compose installation and the way to upgrade it, is to just use the package manager pip with:

pip install docker-compose

I was searching for a good solution for the ugly "how to upgrade to the latest version number"-problem, which appeared after you´ve read the official docs - and just found it occasionally - just have a look at the docker-compose pip package - it should reflect (mostly) the current number of the latest released Docker Compose version.

A package manager is always the best solution if it comes to managing software installations! So you just abstract from handling the versions on your own.


If you installed with pip, to upgrade you can just use:

 pip install --upgrade docker-compose

or as Mariyo states with pip3 explicitly:

 pip3 install --upgrade docker-compose

After a lot of looking at ways to perform this I ended up using jq, and hopefully I can expand it to handle other repos beyond Docker-Compose without too much work.

# If you have jq installed this will automatically find the latest release binary for your architecture and download it
curl --silent "https://api.github.com/repos/docker/compose/releases/latest" | jq --arg PLATFORM_ARCH "$(echo `uname -s`-`uname -m`)" -r '.assets[] | select(.name | endswith($PLATFORM_ARCH)).browser_download_url' | xargs sudo curl -L -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose --url

Here is another oneliner to install the latest version of docker-compose using curl and sed.

curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/`curl -fsSLI -o /dev/null -w %{url_effective} https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/latest | sed 's#.*tag/##g' && echo`/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose && chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

use this from command line: sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.22.0/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Write down the latest release version

Apply executable permissions to the binary:

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Then test version:

$ docker-compose --version

If you have homebrew you can also install via brew

$ brew install docker-compose

This is a good way to install on a Mac OS system


I was trying to install docker-compose on "Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS" but after installing it like this:

sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.26.0/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

I was getting:

-bash: /usr/local/bin/docker-compose: Permission denied

and while I was using it with sudo I was getting:

sudo: docker-compose: command not found

So here's the steps that I took and solved my problem:

sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.26.0/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
sudo ln -sf /usr/local/bin/docker-compose /usr/bin/docker-compose
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/docker-compose

On ubuntu desktop 18.04.2, I have the 'local' removed from the path when using the curl command to install the package and it works for me. See above answer by Kshitij.


If the above methods aren't working for you, then refer to this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/40554985

curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.22.0/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" > ./docker-compose
sudo mv ./docker-compose /usr/bin/docker-compose
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/docker-compose