Your Docker Compose File Is Probably Wrong — 7 Mistakes I See in Every Project

I've reviewed over 200 Docker Compose files. Most of them have the same problems. Not bugs — they work fine. But they're ticking time bombs for production, security, or your sanity at 3 AM. Here are the 7 most common mistakes and how to fix them. 1. Using latest Tag # BAD services : db : image : postgres:latest # GOOD services : db : image : postgres:16.2-alpine Why it matters: latest today is not latest tomorrow. Your staging and production will run different versions. Debugging will be hell. Rule: Always pin to a specific version. Use Alpine variants for smaller images. 2. No Health Checks # BAD services : api : depends_on : - db # GOOD services : db : image : postgres:16.2-alpine healthcheck : test : [ " CMD-SHELL" , " pg_isready -U postgres" ] interval : 5s timeout : 5s retries : 5 api : depends_on : db : condition : service_healthy Why it matters: depends_on only waits for the container to start , not for the service to be ready . Your API crashes because Postgres isn't accepting