How to copy folders to docker image from Dockerfile?

I tried the following command in my Dockerfile: COPY * / and got mighty surprised at the result. Seems the naive docker code traverses the directories from the glob and then dumps the each file in the target directory while respectfully ignoring my directory structure.

At least that is how I understand this ticket and it certainly corresponds to the result I got.

I guess the only reason this behavior can still exist must be that there is some other way this should be done. But it is not so easy for a bear of very little brain to understand how, does anyone know?

10 Answers

Use ADD (docs)

The ADD command can accept as a <src> parameter:

1. A folder within the build folder (the same folder as your Dockerfile). You would then add a line in your Dockerfile like this:

ADD folder /path/inside/your/container 

or

2. A single-file archive anywhere in your host filesystem. To create an archive use the command:

tar -cvzf newArchive.tar.gz /path/to/your/folder 

You would then add a line to your Dockerfile like this:

ADD /path/to/archive/newArchive.tar.gz /path/inside/your/container 

Notes:

• ADD will automatically extract your archive.
• presence/absence of trailing slashes is important, see the linked docs

Like @Vonc said, there is no possibility to add a command like as of now. The only workaround is to mention the folder, to create it and add contents to it.

# add contents to folder ADD src $HOME/src 

Would create a folder called src in your directory and add contents of your folder src into this.

use ADD instead of COPY. Suppose you want to copy everything in directory src from host to directory dst from container:

ADD src dst 

Note: directory dst will be automatically created in container.

As mentioned in your ticket:

You have COPY files/* /test/ which expands to COPY files/dir files/file1 files/file2 files/file /test/.
If you split this up into individual COPY commands (e.g. COPY files/dir /test/) you'll see that (for better or worse) COPY will copy the contents of each arg dir into the destination directory. Not the arg dir itself, but the contents.

I'm not thrilled with that fact that COPY doesn't preserve the top-level dir but its been that way for a while now.

so in the name of preserving a backward compatibility, it is not possible to COPY/ADD a directory structure.

The only workaround would be a series of RUN mkdir -p /x/y/z to build the target directory structure, followed by a series of docker ADD (one for each folder to fill).
(ADD, not COPY, as per comments)

COPY . <destination>

Which would be in your case:

COPY . /

I don't completely understand the case of the original poster but I can proof that it's possible to copy directory structure using COPY in Dockerfile.

Suppose you have this folder structure:

folder1 file1.html file2.html folder2 file3.html file4.html subfolder file5.html file6.html 

To copy it to the destination image you can use such a Dockerfile content:

FROM nginx COPY ./folder1/ /usr/share/nginx/html/folder1/ COPY ./folder2/ /usr/share/nginx/html/folder2/ RUN ls -laR /usr/share/nginx/html/* 

The output of docker build . as follows:

$ docker build --no-cache . Sending build context to Docker daemon 9.728kB Step 1/4 : FROM nginx ---> 7042885a156a Step 2/4 : COPY ./folder1/ /usr/share/nginx/html/folder1/ ---> 6388fd58798b Step 3/4 : COPY ./folder2/ /usr/share/nginx/html/folder2/ ---> fb6c6eacf41e Step 4/4 : RUN ls -laR /usr/share/nginx/html/* ---> Running in face3cbc0031 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 494 Dec 25 09:56 /usr/share/nginx/html/50x.html -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 612 Dec 25 09:56 /usr/share/nginx/html/index.html /usr/share/nginx/html/folder1: total 16 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 16 10:43 . drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 Jan 16 10:43 .. -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 7 Jan 16 10:32 file1.html -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 7 Jan 16 10:32 file2.html /usr/share/nginx/html/folder2: total 20 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jan 16 10:43 . drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 Jan 16 10:43 .. -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 7 Jan 16 10:32 file3.html -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 7 Jan 16 10:32 file4.html drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 16 10:33 subfolder /usr/share/nginx/html/folder2/subfolder: total 16 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 16 10:33 . drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jan 16 10:43 .. -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 7 Jan 16 10:32 file5.html -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 7 Jan 16 10:32 file6.html Removing intermediate container face3cbc0031 ---> 0e0062afab76 Successfully built 0e0062afab76 

Replace the * with a /

So instead of

COPY * <destination>

use

COPY / <destination>

FROM openjdk:8-jdk-alpine RUN apk update && apk add wget openssl lsof procps curl RUN apk update RUN mkdir -p /apps/agent RUN mkdir -p /apps/lib ADD ./app/agent /apps/agent ADD ./app/lib /apps/lib ADD ./app/* /apps/app/ RUN ls -lrt /apps/app/ CMD sh /apps/app/launch.sh 

Within my Dockerfile, I'm copying my ./apps/agent and ./apps/lib directories to /apps/agent and /apps/lib directories.

Suppose you want to copy the contents from a folder where you have docker file into your container. Use ADD:

RUN mkdir /temp ADD folder /temp/Newfolder 

it will add to your container with temp/newfolder

folder is the folder/directory where you have the dockerfile, more concretely, where you put your content and want to copy that.

Now can you check your copied/added folder by runining container and see the content using ls

the simplest way:

sudo docker cp path/on/your/machine adam_ubuntu:/root/path_in_container 

Note putting into the root path if you are copying something that needs to be picked up by the root using ~.