docker/compose · error

cannot specify DEPRECATED "--no-ansi" and "--ansi". Please u

Error message

cannot specify DEPRECATED "--no-ansi" and "--ansi". Please use only "--ansi"

What it means

The root-level persistent flags --no-ansi and --ansi are mutually exclusive; the former is deprecated in favor of the latter. During CLI initialization in cmd/compose/compose.go, after dotenv loading, the code checks the ansi mode string: if --no-ansi was passed while --ansi was explicitly set to anything other than the default "auto", the command aborts. Passing --no-ansi alone is still accepted and internally maps to --ansi never with a deprecation warning on stderr.

Source

Thrown at cmd/compose/compose.go:488

				if parentPrerun != nil {
					err := parentPrerun(cmd, args)
					if err != nil {
						return err
					}
				}
			}

			if verbose {
				logrus.SetLevel(logrus.TraceLevel)
			}

			err := setEnvWithDotEnv(opts, dockerCli)
			if err != nil {
				return err
			}
			if noAnsi {
				if ansi != "auto" {
					return errors.New(`cannot specify DEPRECATED "--no-ansi" and "--ansi". Please use only "--ansi"`)
				}
				ansi = "never"
				fmt.Fprint(os.Stderr, "option '--no-ansi' is DEPRECATED ! Please use '--ansi' instead.\n")
			}
			if v, ok := os.LookupEnv("COMPOSE_ANSI"); ok && !cmd.Flags().Changed("ansi") {
				ansi = v
			}
			formatter.SetANSIMode(dockerCli, ansi)

			if noColor, ok := os.LookupEnv("NO_COLOR"); ok && noColor != "" {
				display.NoColor()
				formatter.SetANSIMode(dockerCli, formatter.Never)
			}

			switch ansi {
			case "never":
				display.Mode = display.ModePlain
			case "always":

View on GitHub (pinned to ddc4b044b6)

Solutions

1. Remove --no-ansi from the command line and keep only --ansi (e.g. --ansi never replaces --no-ansi).
2. If the flag comes from a script variable, audit and clean the variable so only --ansi remains.
3. In automation that cannot edit the invocation, set the COMPOSE_ANSI environment variable (e.g. COMPOSE_ANSI=never) instead of passing either flag, since COMPOSE_ANSI is applied when --ansi was not changed.

Example fix

# before
docker compose --no-ansi --ansi never up

# after
docker compose --ansi never up

# before invoking, ensure only one of the flags is present
if printf '%s\n' "$@" | grep -q -- '--no-ansi' && printf '%s\n' "$@" | grep -q -- '--ansi'; then
  echo "remove --no-ansi; use --ansi only" >&2
  exit 1
fi

When it happens

Trigger: Running any docker compose command that combines both flags, e.g. `docker compose --no-ansi --ansi never up`, or `docker compose --no-ansi --ansi=always ps`. It only fires when --ansi differs from its default value "auto", so `--no-ansi` plus an explicitly-set `--ansi auto` still passes.

Common situations: CI pipelines or shell scripts written for older Compose versions that used --no-ansi, later amended to add --ansi without removing the old flag; wrapper scripts that concatenate flag variables (e.g. FLAGS="--no-ansi $ANSI_FLAGS").

Related errors

• cannot specify DEPRECATED "--workdir" and "--project-directo
• can't use --progress plain while ANSI support is forced
• --index requires one service to be selected
• cannot combine --attach and --attach-dependencies
• can't use --progress tty while ANSI support is disabled

AI-assisted analysis of docker/compose@ddc4b044b6 (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/f78ff286a795e16e. Report an issue: GitHub.