Version in docker-compose.yml is unsupported

When following the quick-start guide, at step ./docker/quickstart.sh I get:

ERROR: Version in "./docker-compose.yml" is unsupported. You might be seeing this error because you're using the wrong Compose file version. Either specify a supported version (e.g "2.2" or "3.3") and place your service definitions under theserviceskey, or omit theversionkey and place your service definitions at the root of the file to use version 1. For more on the Compose file format versions, see https://docs.docker.com/compose/compose-file/

The compose files are 3.8, so I upgraded my docker to 19.03.13 to ensure compatibility. This didn’t work.

Possible resulution: Downgrade docker-compose.yml and docker-compose.override.yml to 3.7, this worked for me (so far).

[th0ger]

The issue was caused by too low version of docker-compose = 1.25.0, which is unfortunately the highest version Ubuntu supports on any of their current releases, including focal (20.04LTS), groovy (20.10) and hirsute.

For reference if anyone needs it: I’m on focal (20.04LTS) with docker-ce installed from deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu focal stable and docker-compose installed from Ubuntu universe.

$ dpkg -l | grep ii | grep docker
ii  docker-ce                                                   5:19.03.13~3-0~ubuntu-focal
ii  docker-ce-cli                                               5:19.03.13~3-0~ubuntu-focal
ii  docker-compose                                              1.25.0-1

Upgraded docker-compose the official docker/non-Debian-way:

$ sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.27.4/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
$ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
$ which docker-compose
/usr/local/bin/docker-compose
$ docker-compose -v
docker-compose version 1.27.4, build 40524192

Note that /usr/bin/docker-compose is still the old version.

[th0ger]

@jplaisted I think you are right, here’s a minimal example docker.compose.yml:

version: '3.8'
services:
  zookeeper:
    image: confluentinc/cp-zookeeper:5.4.0
    environment:
      ZOOKEEPER_CLIENT_PORT: 2181
      ZOOKEEPER_TICK_TIME: 2000

$ docker-compose up
ERROR: Version in "./docker-compose.yml" is unsupported. You might be seeing this error because you're using the wrong Compose file version. Either specify a supported version (e.g "2.2" or "3.3") and place your service definitions under the `services` key, or omit the `version` key and place your service definitions at the root of the file to use version 1.
For more on the Compose file format versions, see https://docs.docker.com/compose/compose-file/

version: 3.7 works.