The Mystery Of The Broken Docker Compose Terminal

I have been highly annoyed over the last few weeks with my docker containers terminal prompts. It would mess up every time I'd try to use tab complete, up/down arrows, or copy/paste. The screen would display weird characters and sometimes just not respond.

Command I use to get a shell inside of a new container:

docker-compose run --service-ports app /bin/bash

Then when I try to use my arrow up/down keys I get the following:

root@81918ad1f93a:/data/web# ^[[A^[[A^[[A^[[A

This highly impeded my ability to get work done.

Solution:

Ends up the issue is with docker-compose version v2.0.0-beta.6 which must have some bugs because it has been making my terminal go haywire.

You can check your version with the following commands:

docker-compose version
docker compose version

I fixed the issue by getting off of the experimental version using these instructions:

Click the docker icon on the top menu bar. Select Perferences>Experimental Features and uncheck Use Docker Compose V2. I then restarted docker and everything was back to normal with my docker-compose alias pointed back at version version 1.29.2.


Posted on 2021-07-28