ADD or COPY a folder in Docker
DockerDocker Problem Overview
My directory Structure as follows
Dockerfile downloads
I want to add downloads to /tmp
ADD downloads /tmp/
COPY down* /tmp
ADD ./downloads /tmp
Nothings works. It copies the contents of downloads into tmp. I want to copy the downloads floder. Any idea?
ADD . tmp/
copies Dockerfile also. i dont want to copy Dockerfile into tmp/
Docker Solutions
Solution 1 - Docker
I believe that you need:
COPY downloads/ /tmp/downloads/
That will copy the contents of the downloads directory into a directory called /tmp/downloads/ in the image.
Solution 2 - Docker
Note: The directory itself is not copied, just its contents
From the dockerfile reference about COPY and ADD, it says Note: The directory itself is not copied, just its contents., so you have to specify a dest directory explicitly.
RE: https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/builder/#copy
e.g.
Copy the content of the src directory to /some_dir/dest_dir directory.
COPY ./src /some_dir/dest_dir/
Solution 3 - Docker
You can use:
RUN mkdir /path/to/your/new/folder/
COPY /host/folder/* /path/to/your/new/folder/
I could not find a way to do it directly with only one COPY call though.
Solution 4 - Docker
First tar the directory you want to ADD as a single archive file:
tar -zcf download.tar.gz download
Then ADD the archive file in Dockerfile:
ADD download.tar.gz tmp/
Solution 5 - Docker
The best for me was:
COPY . /tmp/
With following .dockerignore file in root
Dockerfile
.dockerignore
# Other files you don't want to copy
This solution is good if you have many folders and files that you need in container and not so many files that you don't need. Otherwise user2807690' solution is better.
Solution 6 - Docker
If you folder does not end with a /it is considered a file, so you should something like write ADD /abc/ def/ if you want to copy a folder.