Problems getting Singularity Compose to work - singularity-container

Question

I wrote a small test project for Singularity Compose, consisting of a small server application, with the following YAML file:
version: "1.0"
instances:
server:
build:
context: ./server
recipe: server.recipe
ports:
- 9999:9999
When I call singularity-compose build, it successfully builds server.sif. Calling singularity-compose up also seemingly works without error, and calling singularity-compose ps results in something that looks just fine:
+ singularity-compose ps
INSTANCES NAME PID IMAGE
1 server 4176911 server.sif
However, the server application does not work, calling my test client results in it saying that there is no answer from the server.
But if I run server.sif directly without compose, everything works just fine.
Also, I tripple checked, my test application listens to port 9999, thus should be reachable from the outside.
What did I do wrong?
Edit:
I also checked whether there actually is any process listening at port 9999 by calling sudo lsof -i -P -n | grep LISTEN, this is not the case. Only when I manually start server.sif without compose it shows me the process listening.
Edit:
I went into the Singularity Compose shell and tried to start the Server application directly in there, just as a test, and it resulted in Permission denied. Not sure if that means anything.
Edit:
I now gave the application execution rights within the shell and called in there, this works. Am now trying to add execution rights in the recipe. If that works, it would be kind of strange, as the executable was build right there, and thus should already have execution rights.
Edit:
I added chmod +x in my recipe both after building Server and before executing it. Doesn't work either.
Also checked whether any bridges exist using brctl show, this is not the case.
Edit: My recipe, adjusted by the input of tsnowlan in his answer below:
Bootstrap: docker
From: ubuntu:20.04
%files
connection.cpp
connection.h
main.cpp
server.cpp
server.h
server.pro
%post
# get some basics
apt update
apt-get install -y wget
apt-get install -y software-properties-common
# get C++ compiler
apt-get install -y g++
apt-get install -y build-essential
apt-get install -y build-essential cmake
# get Qt
apt-get install -y qt5-default
# compile
qmake
make
ls
%runscript
/Server
%startscript
/Server
Again, note that the application works just fine both when compiled and startet normally and when started within a Singularity image (but without Singularity Compose).
The ls at the end of the %post block is used to verify that the Server application was build successfully.

Answer 1

Please share the server.recipe, as it is difficult to identify should be/is happening without it.
Without having that, my guess is that you have a %runscript in your definition file, but no %startscript. When the image is executed directly or via singularity run image.sif, the contents of %runscript determine what happens. To emulate the docker-compose style, the singularity images are started as persistent instances. In this case, the %startscript block determines what runs. If it is empty, it will just start up and sit there doing nothing. This would explain why when run by hand it works but not when using compose.