Update only one Container via docker-compose

Just run docker-compose up -d again (without down / stop / kill before).

Initial docker-compose.yml:

version: "2"

services:
  db1:
    command: mongod
    image: mongo:3.2.4
    ports:
      - "27020:27017"

  db2:
    command: mongod
    image: mongo:3.2.4
    ports:
      - "27021:27017"

Update db2:

version: "2"

services:
  db1:
    command: mongod
    image: mongo:3.2.4
    ports:
      - "27020:27017"

  db2:
    command: mongod
    image: mongo:3.2.6
    ports:
      - "27021:27017"

Run docker-compose up -d again:

Pulling db2 (mongo:3.2.6)...
3.2.6: Pulling from library/mongo
47994b92ab73: Pull complete
a3ed95caeb02: Pull complete
71b6becd9768: Pull complete
7d5d40f9dc7b: Pull complete
9dc152e647de: Pull complete
3f1f69340f17: Pull complete
82a29b50f1d2: Pull complete
97869c61a050: Pull complete
50aa2bf3bccc: Pull complete
03913f2c5b05: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:29ee114c0ce96494553cd72f18d92935b36778b77bce167fc9962e442d8c7647
Status: Downloaded newer image for mongo:3.2.6
composetest_db1_1 is up-to-date
Recreating composetest_db2_1 

The last two lines of the output show the expected behavior.

There's one use-case where the accepted answer doesn't work:

Say you have 4 containers, with 2 having a new version, and you only want to update/restart ONE of them.

If you simply do docker-compose up -d again, this will update both containers.

If you want to target only one specific container, you can do it in two steps:

• Pull all updates: docker-compose pull (this will just download the images, not do anything else)
• And then only update the container you want: docker-compose up -d --no-deps name_of_your_container

--no-deps is important to avoid restarting dependencies of your updated containers by mistake.

To restart only one container you can simply do:

docker-compose up -d --build image-name

The output will look like this:

Recreating image-name ... done