Summary

Support the common form of compose extends — a service inheriting another service's config within the same document. A new pure module compose2pod/extends.py exposes resolve_extends(compose) -> compose that flattens every service's extends away (transitive, cycle-checked, per-key merge) before validate() runs, so the rest of the pipeline never sees extends. Cross-file file: extends is refused loudly, keeping compose2pod's single-document input model intact.

Design: planning/changes/2026-07-11.01-extends.md. This is the largest Bucket B item from the coverage audit.

What's supported

• Mapping form only (extends: {service: <name>}); service must name a service in the same document. Transitive, with cycle detection.
• Resolved as a pre-validation step in cli.py (resolve_extends → validate → emit_script); also exported as public API for library callers.
• Cross-file file:, bare-string extends, unknown extends keys, non-string service, unknown referenced service, and incompatible-form merges are each refused with a distinct UnsupportedComposeError.

Merge semantics (per-key category, matching the spec for the supported subset)

• Mapping-merge (local wins): environment, labels, annotations, extra_hosts, ulimits, healthcheck, depends_on. List-form environment/depends_on are normalized to mappings first.
• Sequence-concatenate (base then local): cap_add, cap_drop, security_opt, devices, group_add, secrets, configs, volumes, tmpfs, env_file. Scalar tmpfs/env_file normalized to a one-element list first.
• Override (local replaces): everything else, including command/entrypoint (argv, replaced not concatenated) and unknown keys (which validate() then rejects).

Where a faithful merge is impossible (a mapping-merge key that is neither a mapping nor a list-form environment/depends_on, or a concat key that is neither a list nor a scalar string), resolution refuses loudly rather than guessing.

Documented divergences

• Only environment/depends_on accept list form for the mapping-merge; other mapping-merge keys in list form on a merged side are refused (not silently coerced).
• Short-form volumes are concatenated rather than merged by target path (podman resolves duplicate mounts).
• Referenced resources are not auto-imported — as in Compose, the extending service must declare what it needs.

Robustness

A whole-branch review found that a service extending a non-dict base (e.g. a null service body) crashed raw. Fixed at the root: parsing.validate() now rejects a non-dict service value ("service X must be a mapping"), and resolve_extends defers such a base to validation instead of crashing — both paths now return a clean exit 2 with no traceback.

Testing

just test-ci at 100% coverage (293 tests), just lint-ci clean, just check-planning OK. tests/test_extends.py covers each merge category, list/scalar normalization, transitive + diamond resolution, cycle detection, and every refusal; tests/test_cli.py proves the end-to-end pipeline (a merged doc emits correctly; a file: extends and a non-dict base each return a clean error). architecture/supported-subset.md gains an ## Extends section.