Docker follow symlink outside context

Question

Yet another Docker symlink question. I have a bunch of files that I want to copy over to all my Docker builds. My dir structure is:

parent_dir
    - common_f         


        

Answer 1

One possibility is to run the build in the parent directory, with:

$ docker build [tags...] -f dir1/Dockerfile .

(Or equivalently, in child directory,)

$ docker build  [tags...] -f Dockerfile ..

The Dockerfile will have to be configured to do copy/add with appropriate paths. Depending on your setup, you might want a .dockerignore in the parent to leave out things you don't want to be put into the context.