Docker compose is a dead end AFAIK, it's not deprecated or anything, but the community power behind it has essentially moved to other things (Kubernetes, but also wasmer, nomad, skaffold).

While Docker Desktop / Podman / Rancher Desktop combined with stuff like Skaffold aren't exactly a drop-in replacement for docker-compose, it does do a much better job at bringing up and tearing down entire compositions while re-using existing packaging and access controls.

If you are running docker-compose for non-development things, it might be a different story; it might be suitable for non-GitOps things, but as posted elsewhere, at that point you're better off using something like systemd.

When composing really small setups I either do this with a shell script (think 10 lines including trapping exits) or a systemd unit. Whenever it needs to be bigger I nearly always end up with an actual scheduler (K8S, Nomad) and GitOps because you can't really deliver something maintainable, available and durable anymore without it (well... I suppose if you have only 1 project to deliver, forever, you could manually manage it).

It does get a whole lot easier when you have a common foundation you can re-use. Spinning up an entire stack with security, monitoring, alerting, automatic rollouts/rollbacks for even the smallest project is just single-digit minutes work now.

Pulling in some other factors: how sharable/collaboratable is something these days if it is not built on similar enough technologies and modules? A solo yolo project might not care much about this, but when was the last time someone asked for software that is risky and not durable?

What? I'm not involved and don't follow closely but pretty sure it's about as dead as docker itself. I.e. not dead. There was commits 8hrs ago -- https://github.com/docker/compose/. Not sure who did that if not "the community".