During a focused maintenance sprint on the containers/podman-compose repository, Alex enhanced reliability and build-time dependency modeling for multi-service Docker Compose workflows. Alex addressed a crash that occurred when merging named volumes with driver options into uncustomized named volumes, improving runtime stability and aligning with the Docker Compose specification. Additionally, Alex implemented support for referencing other services in additional build contexts, enabling deterministic modeling of build-time dependencies between services. The work involved backend development and thorough unit testing, leveraging Python and YAML handling. Alex’s contributions demonstrated careful attention to code quality, with targeted commits and comprehensive testing to ensure robust, maintainable solutions.