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I am bringing up my project dependencies using docker-compose. So far this used to work

docker-compose up -d --no-recreate;
However today I tried running the project again after couple of weeks and I was greeted with error message
Creating my-postgres ... error
ERROR: for my-postgres  Cannot create container for service postgres: b'Conflict. The container name "/my-postgres" is already in use by container "dbd06bb1d99eda6f075ea688df16e8b355e559e1759f084dee8f3cddfc535b0b". You have to remove (or rename) that container to be able to reuse that name.'
ERROR: for postgres  Cannot create container for service postgres: b'Conflict. The container name "/my-postgres" is already in use by container "dbd06bb1d99eda6f075ea688df16e8b355e559e1759f084dee8f3cddfc535b0b". You have to remove (or rename) that container to be able to reuse that name.'
ERROR: Encountered errors while bringing up the project.
My docker-compose.yml file is 
postgres:
    container_name: my-postgres
    image: postgres:latest
    ports:
      - "15432:5432"
Docker version is
Docker version 19.03.1, build 74b1e89
Docker compose version is
docker-compose version 1.24.1, build 4667896b
Intended behavior of this call is to:
make the container if it does not exist 
start the container if it exists 
just chill and do nothing if the container is already started
Docker Compose normally assigns a container name based on its current project name and the name of the services: block.  Specifying container_name: explicitly overrides this; but, it means you can’t launch multiple copies of the same Compose file with different project names (from different directories) because the container name you’ve explicitly chosen won’t be used.
You almost never care what the container name is explicitly.  It only really matters if you’re trying to use plain docker commands to manipulate Compose-managed containers; it has no impact on inter-service communication.  Just delete the container_name: line.
(For similar reasons you can almost always delete hostname: and links: sections if you have them with no practical impact on your overall system.)
                This does work and intended behavior is achieved. However the question is why did it stop working in the first place?
– Rouz
                Aug 5, 2019 at 16:04
                The other implication here is that you have a previous version of this running (probably from a differently-named directory).
– David Maze
                Aug 5, 2019 at 16:11
In my case I moved the project in an other directory.
When I tryed to run docker-compose up it failed because of some conflicts.
With command docker system prune I resolved them.
Well...the error message seems pretty straightforward to me...
The container name "/my-postgres" is already in use by container
If you just want to restart where you left, you should use docker-compose start.

Otherwise, just clean up your workspace before running it :
docker-compose down
docker-compose up -d
                Straightforward message or not, it's not clear under which conditions it occurs. Apparently docker refuses to create a container with the specified name, because there is already a container by that same name. Which suggests that docker-compose failed to notice it for some reason. Race condition?
– x-yuri
                Apr 19, 2021 at 16:52
Remove --no-recreate flag from your docker-compose command. And execute the command again.
$docker-compose up -d
--no-recreate is using for preventing accedental updates.
If there are existing containers for a service, and the service’s configuration or image was changed after the container’s creation, docker-compose up picks up the changes by stopping and recreating the containers. To prevent Compose from picking up changes, use the --no-recreate flag.
official docker docs.Link
Basically, it boils down to the following: (use them base on your use cases)
To clear containers:
docker rm -f $(docker ps -a -q)
To clear images:
docker rmi -f $(docker images -a -q)
To clear volumes:
docker volume rm $(docker volume ls -q)
To clear networks:
docker network rm $(docker network ls | tail -n+2 | awk '{if($2 !~ /bridge|none|host/){ print $1 }}')
        
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