docker-compose up for only certain containers

You can start containers by using:

$ docker-compose up -d client

This will run containers in the background and output will be avaiable from

$ docker-compose logs

and it will consist of all your started containers

To start a particular service defined in your docker-compose file. for example if your have a docker-compose.yml

docker-compose start db  

given a compose file like as:

version: '3.3'

services:
   db:
     image: mysql:5.7
     ports:
       - "3306:3306"
     volumes:
       - ./db_data:/var/lib/mysql
     restart: always
     environment:
       MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: yourPassword
       MYSQL_DATABASE: wordpress
       MYSQL_USER: wordpress
       MYSQL_PASSWORD: yourPassword

   wordpress:
     depends_on:
       - db
     image: wordpress:latest
     ports:
       - "80:80"
     volumes:
       - ./l3html:/var/www/html
     restart: always
     environment:
       WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: db:3306
       WORDPRESS_DB_USER: wordpress
       WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: yourPassword
volumes:
    db_data:
    l3html:

Some times you want to start mySQL only (sometimes you just want to populate a database) before you start your entire suite.

Update

Starting with docker-compose 1.28.0 the new service profiles are just made for that! With profiles you can mark services to be only started in specific profiles:

services:
  client:
    # ...
  db:
    # ...
  npm:
    profiles: ["cli-only"]
    # ...

docker-compose up # start main services, no npm
docker-compose run --rm npm # run npm service
docker-compose --profile cli-only up # start main and all "cli-only" services

original answer

Since docker-compose v1.5 it is possible to pass multiple docker-compose.yml files with the -f flag. This allows you to split your dev tools into a separate docker-compose.yml which you then only include on-demand:

# start and attach to all your essential services
docker-compose up

# execute a defined command in docker-compose.dev.yml
docker-compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml run npm update

# if your command depends_on a service you need to include both configs
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.dev.yml run npm update

For an in-depth discussion on this see docker/compose#1896.

Oh, just with this:

$ docker-compose up client server database

One good solution is to run only desired services like this:

docker-compose up --build $(<services.txt)

and services.txt file look like this:

services1 services2, etc

of course if dependancy (depends_on), need to run related services together.

--build is optional, just for example.