How to resolve Docker Compose Warning WARN[0000] Found orphan containers

Recently I got the docker compose error:

Warning WARN[0000] Found orphan containers ([container-name]) for this project. If you removed or renamed this service in your compose file, you can run this command with the — remove-orphans flag to clean it up.

when I was trying to deploy more than 1 Postgresql container within my local machine for testing purposes. It was not the Postgresql that had the issue, but rather my docker-compose.yaml file that has the issue. It seems that the issue was because I used the same directory name for both of the Postgresql projects.

Before

services:
  my-postgre:
    container_name: my_postgre
    image: postgres:alpine
    restart: always
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: mydb
      POSTGRES_USER: me
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD_FILE: /run/secrets/postgres_password
    volumes:
      - pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data
      - ./backup:/home/backup
    secrets:
      - postgres_password
    ports:
      - 5424:5432
    networks:
      - my_network

volumes:
  pgdata:

networks:
  my_network:
    driver: bridge

secrets:
  postgres_password:
    file: ./postgres_password.txt

Based on the documentation here. We can solve the above issue using several ways.

1 Running docker compose command with -p parameter.

sudo docker compose -p my-project-name up -d

2 Adding the project name in the docker-compose.yaml file.

I added the project name to distinguish between the two projects and now both of them running as expected.

After

# adding the project name here
name: my-project-name

services:
  my-postgre:
    container_name: my_postgre
    image: postgres:alpine
    restart: always
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: mydb
      POSTGRES_USER: me
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD_FILE: /run/secrets/postgres_password
    volumes:
      - pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data
      - ./backup:/home/backup
    secrets:
      - postgres_password
    ports:
      - 5424:5432
    networks:
      - my_network

volumes:
  pgdata:

networks:
  my_network:
    driver: bridge

secrets:
  postgres_password:
    file: ./postgres_password.txt

I know this is not much but hopefully, you found this post useful somehow. Happy coding!