How to Use Docker Compose for Production Workloads — with Profiles, Watch Mode, and GPU Support

Docker Compose has evolved significantly in 2024-2025 with features that make it viable for complex deployment scenarios beyond local development. Key improvements covered include: profiles for managing multiple environments from a single file, watch mode for instant file syncing without rebuilds, GPU passthrough for ML inference workloads, proper health checks with dependency conditions to eliminate startup race conditions, and Docker Bake integration for production image builds. The guide provides practical configuration examples for each feature, a week-by-week adoption path, and an honest assessment of where Compose still falls short compared to Kubernetes or full orchestration platforms.