Docker Compose broken after update

[felixlabrot]

Describe the bug

Docker Compose is completely broken and all commands fail with "Error response from daemon: client version 1.43 is too old. Minimum supported API version is 1.44, please upgrade your client to a newer version". This is caused by Photon OS using the wildly outdated Compose version 2.40.3-2.ph5. Current is 5.1.0. This needs to be upgraded immediately, as all servers are out of operation and we can't start or stop containers and basically do nothing anymore.

Reproduction steps

Run any docker compose command

Expected behavior

Photon OS needs to use current versions of Docker software and not wildly outdated years old versions

Additional context

No response

[dcasota]

Hi,

I agree with your concerns. Yes, API dependencies exist and in this issue scenario they are embedded in the Go module graph. A tdnf-triggered dependency graph only reflects what's declared in spec files, not the actual requirements from upstream source code.

Besides upgrading Docker Compose, Docker v29.3.0 (released March 5, 2026) reverted the minimum API requirement from 1.44 to 1.40 via moby/moby#52067 - specifically to address this widespread breakage. However, this remains an upstream workaround.

A better long-term solution for dependency graphs involves using a single upstream source code lake. Continuously monitoring upstream source code API changes and automated updates of spec files isn't far off. The problem can be solved sustainably.

Recently the first step has been introduced as onesandbox directory with overlay mounts, rather than per-stage image tarballs, see vmware/photon@59901fe.

@ Photon OS team: I used Opus 4.6 to analyze the lake upstream and create an initial upstream-source-code-dependency-scanner. The action runner generates artifacts. For version 5.0, the scanner advised updating 40+ packages to include new upstream dependencies like docker, buildx, compose, containerd, nerdctl, several Python packages, and more. This is just the first version and can be improved.