How can I include files from outside of Docker's build context using the "ADD" command in the Docker file?
From the Docker documentation:
The path must be inside the context of the build; you cannot ADD
../something/something, because the first step of a docker build is to
send the context directory (and subdirectories) to the docker daemon.
I do not want to restructure my whole project just to accommodate Docker in this matter. I want to keep all my Docker files in the same sub-directory.
Also, it appears Docker does not yet (and may not ever) support symlinks: Dockerfile ADD command does not follow symlinks on host #1676.
The only other thing I can think of is to include a pre-build step to copy the files into the Docker build context (and configure my version control to ignore those files). Is there a better workaround for than that?
The best way to work around this is to specify the Dockerfile independently of the build context, using -f.
For instance, this command will give the ADD command access to anything in your current directory.
docker build -f docker-files/Dockerfile .
Update: Docker now allows having the Dockerfile outside the build context (fixed in 18.03.0-ce). So you can also do something like
docker build -f ../Dockerfile .
I often find myself utilizing the --build-arg option for this purpose. For example after putting the following in the Dockerfile:
ARG SSH_KEY
RUN echo "$SSH_KEY" > /root/.ssh/id_rsa
You can just do:
docker build -t some-app --build-arg SSH_KEY="$(cat ~/file/outside/build/context/id_rsa)" .
But note the following warning from the Docker documentation:
Warning: It is not recommended to use build-time variables for passing secrets like github keys, user credentials etc. Build-time variable values are visible to any user of the image with the docker history command.
I spent a good time trying to figure out a good pattern and how to better explain what's going on with this feature support. I realized that the best way to explain it was as follows...
Dockerfile: Will only see files under its own relative path
Context: a place in "space" where the files you want to share and your Dockerfile will be copied to
So, with that said, here's an example of the Dockerfile that needs to reuse a file called start.sh
Dockerfile
It will always load from its relative path, having the current directory of itself as the local reference to the paths you specify.
COPY start.sh /runtime/start.sh
Files
Considering this idea, we can think of having multiple copies for the Dockerfiles building specific things, but they all need access to the start.sh.
./all-services/
/start.sh
/service-X/Dockerfile
/service-Y/Dockerfile
/service-Z/Dockerfile
./docker-compose.yaml
Considering this structure and the files above, here's a docker-compose.yml
docker-compose.yaml
In this example, your shared context directory is the runtime directory.
Same mental model here, think that all the files under this directory are moved over to the so-called context.
Similarly, just specify the Dockerfile that you want to copy to that same directory. You can specify that using dockerfile.
The directory where your main content is located is the actual context to be set.
The docker-compose.yml is as follows
version: "3.3"
services:
service-A
build:
context: ./all-service
dockerfile: ./service-A/Dockerfile
service-B
build:
context: ./all-service
dockerfile: ./service-B/Dockerfile
service-C
build:
context: ./all-service
dockerfile: ./service-C/Dockerfile
all-service is set as the context, the shared file start.sh is copied there as well the Dockerfile specified by each dockerfile.
Each gets to be built their own way, sharing the start file!
On Linux you can mount other directories instead of symlinking them
mount --bind olddir newdir
See https://superuser.com/questions/842642 for more details.
I don't know if something similar is available for other OSes.
I also tried using Samba to share a folder and remount it into the Docker context which worked as well.
If you read the discussion in the issue 2745 not only docker may never support symlinks they may never support adding files outside your context. Seems to be a design philosophy that files that go into docker build should explicitly be part of its context or be from a URL where it is presumably deployed too with a fixed version so that the build is repeatable with well known URLs or files shipped with the docker container.
I prefer to build from a version controlled source - ie docker build
-t stuff http://my.git.org/repo - otherwise I'm building from some random place with random files.
fundamentally, no.... -- SvenDowideit, Docker Inc
Just my opinion but I think you should restructure to separate out the code and docker repositories. That way the containers can be generic and pull in any version of the code at run time rather than build time.
Alternatively, use docker as your fundamental code deployment artifact and then you put the dockerfile in the root of the code repository. if you go this route probably makes sense to have a parent docker container for more general system level details and a child container for setup specific to your code.
I believe the simpler workaround would be to change the 'context' itself.
So, for example, instead of giving:
docker build -t hello-demo-app .
which sets the current directory as the context, let's say you wanted the parent directory as the context, just use:
docker build -t hello-demo-app ..
You can also create a tarball of what the image needs first and use that as your context.
https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/build/#/tarball-contexts
This behavior is given by the context directory that the docker or podman uses to present the files to the build process.
A nice trick here is by changing the context dir during the building instruction to the full path of the directory, that you want to expose to the daemon.
e.g:
docker build -t imageName:tag -f /path/to/the/Dockerfile /mysrc/path
using /mysrc/path instead of .(current directory), you'll be using that directory as a context, so any files under it can be seen by the build process.
This example you'll be exposing the entire /mysrc/path tree to the docker daemon.
When using this with docker the user ID who triggered the build must have recursively read permissions to any single directory or file from the context dir.
This can be useful in cases where you have the /home/user/myCoolProject/Dockerfile but want to bring to this container build context, files that aren't in the same directory.
Here is an example of building using context dir, but this time using podman instead of docker.
Lets take as example, having inside your Dockerfile a COPY or ADDinstruction which is copying files from a directory outside of your project, like:
FROM myImage:tag
...
...
COPY /opt/externalFile ./
ADD /home/user/AnotherProject/anotherExternalFile ./
...
In order to build this, with a container file located in the /home/user/myCoolProject/Dockerfile, just do something like:
cd /home/user/myCoolProject
podman build -t imageName:tag -f Dockefile /
Some known use cases to change the context dir, is when using a container as a toolchain for building your souce code.
e.g:
podman build --platform linux/s390x -t myimage:mytag -f ./Dockerfile /tmp/mysrc
or it can be a path relative, like:
podman build --platform linux/s390x -t myimage:mytag -f ./Dockerfile ../../
Another example using this time a global path:
FROM myImage:tag
...
...
COPY externalFile ./
ADD AnotherProject ./
...
Notice that now the full global path for the COPY and ADD is omitted in the Dockerfile command layers.
In this case the contex dir must be relative to where the files are, if both externalFile and AnotherProject are in /opt directory then the context dir for building it must be:
podman build -t imageName:tag -f ./Dockerfile /opt
Note when using COPY or ADD with context dir in docker:
The docker daemon will try to "stream" all the files visible on the context dir tree to the daemon, which can slowdown the build. And requires the user to have recursively permission from the context dir.
This behavior can be more costly specially when using the build through the API. However,with podman the build happens instantaneously, without needing recursively permissions, that's because podman does not enumerate the entire context dir, and doesn't use a client/server architecture as well.
The build for such cases can be way more interesting to use podman instead of docker, when you face such issues using a different context dir.
Some references:
https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/build/
https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-build.1.html
As is described in this GitHub issue the build actually happens in /tmp/docker-12345, so a relative path like ../relative-add/some-file is relative to /tmp/docker-12345. It would thus search for /tmp/relative-add/some-file, which is also shown in the error message.*
It is not allowed to include files from outside the build directory, so this results in the "Forbidden path" message."
Using docker-compose, I accomplished this by creating a service that mounts the volumes that I need and committing the image of the container. Then, in the subsequent service, I rely on the previously committed image, which has all of the data stored at mounted locations. You will then have have to copy these files to their ultimate destination, as host mounted directories do not get committed when running a docker commit command
You don't have to use docker-compose to accomplish this, but it makes life a bit easier
# docker-compose.yml
version: '3'
services:
stage:
image: alpine
volumes:
- /host/machine/path:/tmp/container/path
command: bash -c "cp -r /tmp/container/path /final/container/path"
setup:
image: stage
# setup.sh
# Start "stage" service
docker-compose up stage
# Commit changes to an image named "stage"
docker commit $(docker-compose ps -q stage) stage
# Start setup service off of stage image
docker-compose up setup
Create a wrapper docker build shell script that grabs the file then calls docker build then removes the file.
a simple solution not mentioned anywhere here from my quick skim:
have a wrapper script called docker_build.sh
have it create tarballs, copy large files to the current working directory
call docker build
clean up the tarballs, large files, etc
this solution is good because (1.) it doesn't have the security hole from copying in your SSH private key (2.) another solution uses sudo bind so that has another security hole there because it requires root permission to do bind.
I think as of earlier this year a feature was added in buildx to do just this.
If you have dockerfile 1.4+ and buildx 0.8+ you can do something like this
docker buildx build --build-context othersource= ../something/something .
Then in your docker file you can use the from command to add the context
ADD –from=othersource . /stuff
See this related post https://www.docker.com/blog/dockerfiles-now-support-multiple-build-contexts/
Workaround with links:
ln path/to/file/outside/context/file_to_copy ./file_to_copy
On Dockerfile, simply:
COPY file_to_copy /path/to/file
I was personally confused by some answers, so decided to explain it simply.
You should pass the context, you have specified in Dockerfile, to docker when
want to create image.
I always select root of project as the context in Dockerfile.
so for example if you use COPY command like COPY . .
first dot(.) is the context and second dot(.) is container working directory
Assuming the context is project root, dot(.) , and code structure is like this
sample-project/
docker/
Dockerfile
If you want to build image
and your path (the path you run the docker build command) is /full-path/sample-project/,
you should do this
docker build -f docker/Dockerfile .
and if your path is /full-path/sample-project/docker/,
you should do this
docker build -f Dockerfile ../
An easy workaround might be to simply mount the volume (using the -v or --mount flag) to the container when you run it and access the files that way.
example:
docker run -v /path/to/file/on/host:/desired/path/to/file/in/container/ image_name
for more see: https://docs.docker.com/storage/volumes/
I had this same issue with a project and some data files that I wasn't able to move inside the repo context for HIPAA reasons. I ended up using 2 Dockerfiles. One builds the main application without the stuff I needed outside the container and publishes that to internal repo. Then a second dockerfile pulls that image and adds the data and creates a new image which is then deployed and never stored anywhere. Not ideal, but it worked for my purposes of keeping sensitive information out of the repo.
In my case, my Dockerfile is written like a template containing placeholders which I'm replacing with real value using my configuration file.
So I couldn't specify this file directly but pipe it into the docker build like this:
sed "s/%email_address%/$EMAIL_ADDRESS/;" ./Dockerfile | docker build -t katzda/bookings:latest . -f -;
But because of the pipe, the COPY command didn't work. But the above way solves it by -f - (explicitly saying file not provided). Doing only - without the -f flag, the context AND the Dockerfile are not provided which is a caveat.
How to share typescript code between two Dockerfiles
I had this same problem, but for sharing files between two typescript projects. Some of the other answers didn't work for me because I needed to preserve the relative import paths between the shared code. I solved it by organizing my code like this:
api/
Dockerfile
src/
models/
index.ts
frontend/
Dockerfile
src/
models/
index.ts
shared/
model1.ts
model2.ts
index.ts
.dockerignore
Note: After extracting the shared code into that top folder, I avoided needing to update the import paths because I updated api/models/index.ts and frontend/models/index.ts to export from shared: (eg export * from '../../../shared)
Since the build context is now one directory higher, I had to make a few additional changes:
Update the build command to use the new context:
docker build -f Dockerfile .. (two dots instead of one)
Use a single .dockerignore at the top level to exclude all node_modules. (eg **/node_modules/**)
Prefix the Dockerfile COPY commands with api/ or frontend/
Copy shared (in addition to api/src or frontend/src)
WORKDIR /usr/src/app
COPY api/package*.json ./ <---- Prefix with api/
RUN npm ci
COPY api/src api/ts*.json ./ <---- Prefix with api/
COPY shared usr/src/shared <---- ADDED
RUN npm run build
This was the easiest way I could send everything to docker, while preserving the relative import paths in both projects. The tricky (annoying) part was all the changes/consequences caused by the build context being up one directory.
One quick and dirty way is to set the build context up as many levels as you need - but this can have consequences.
If you're working in a microservices architecture that looks like this:
./Code/Repo1
./Code/Repo2
...
You can set the build context to the parent Code directory and then access everything, but it turns out that with a large number of repositories, this can result in the build taking a long time.
An example situation could be that another team maintains a database schema in Repo1 and your team's code in Repo2 depends on this. You want to dockerise this dependency with some of your own seed data without worrying about schema changes or polluting the other team's repository (depending on what the changes are you may still have to change your seed data scripts of course)
The second approach is hacky but gets around the issue of long builds:
Create a sh (or ps1) script in ./Code/Repo2 to copy the files you need and invoke the docker commands you want, for example:
#!/bin/bash
rm -r ./db/schema
mkdir ./db/schema
cp -r ../Repo1/db/schema ./db/schema
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml down
docker container prune -f
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml up --build
In the docker-compose file, simply set the context as Repo2 root and use the content of the ./db/schema directory in your dockerfile without worrying about the path.
Bear in mind that you will run the risk of accidentally committing this directory to source control, but scripting cleanup actions should be easy enough.
[update, I found the solution, see answer below]
I made a GUI wrapper for protonvpn, a cmd program for Linux. dpkg -b gets me ProtonVPNgui.deb, which works fine. However, I have problems using debuild -S -sa to upload it to Launchpad.
As is, it won't build once uploaded with dput, cf. the error msg
I tried using debuild -i -us -uc -b to build a .deb file for local testing, but it returns:
dpkg-genchanges: error: binary build with no binary artifacts found; cannot distribute
Any ideas? This whole process is driving me nuts. (I use this tar.gz)
I figured it out myself. Create a .deb package locally for testing and upload the project to Launchchpad:
Create a launchpad user account.
Install dh-python with the package manager
Create the package source dir
mkdir myscript-0.1
Copy your python3 script(s) (or the sample script below) to the source dir (don't use !/usr/bin/python, use !/usr/bin/python3 or !/usr/bin/python2 and edit accordingly below)
cp ~/myscript myscript-0.1
cd myscript-0.1
Sample script:
#!/usr/bin/python3
if __name__ == '__main__':
print("Hello world")
Create the packaging skeleton (debian/*)
dh_make -s --createorig
Remove the example files
rm debian/*.ex debian/*.EX debian/README.*
Add eventual binary files to include, e.g. gettext .mo files
mkdir myscript-0.1/source
echo debian/locales/es/LC_MESSAGES/base.mo > myscript-0.1/source/include-binaries
Edit debian/control
Replace its content with the following text:
Source: myscript
Section: utils
Priority: optional
Maintainer: Name,
Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 9), python3, dh-python
Standards-Version: 4.1.4
X-Python3-Version: >= 3.2
Package: myscript
Architecture: all
Depends: ${misc:Depends}, ${python3:Depends}
Description: insert up to 60 chars description
insert long description, indented with spaces
debian/install must contain the script(or several, python, perl, etc., also eventual .desktop files for start menu shortcuts) to install as well as the target directories, each on a line
echo myscript usr/bin > debian/install
Edit debian/rules
Replace its content with the following text:
#!/usr/bin/make -f
%:
dh $# --with=python3
Note: it's a TAB before dh $#, not four spaces!
Build the .deb package
debuild -us -uc
You will get a few Lintian warnings/errors but your package is ready to be used:
../myscript_0.1-1_all.deb
Prepare upload to Launchpad, insert your gdp fingerprint after -k
debuild -S -sa -k12345ABC
Upload to Launchpad
dput ppa:[your ppa name]/ppa myscript_0.1-1_source.changes
This is an update to askubuntu.com/399552. It may take some error messages and googling till you're ready... C.f. the ...orig.tar.gz file at launchpad for the complete project.
I am having trouble creating a lambda layer for the xgboost library. Im running:
Im grabbing a zip of xgboost and it's dependencies from here (https://github.com/alexeybutyrev/aws_lambda_xgboost) and loading it into a layer. When I try to test my lambda, I get this error:
Unable to import module 'lambda_function': No module named 'xgboost.core'
It looks like __init__.py is trying to reference core.py via from .core import <stuff>
Has anyone encountered this error with AWS Lambda before?
EDIT: As #Marcin has remark, the first answer provided works for packages under 262 MB large.
A. Python Packages within Lambda Layer size limit
You can also do it with AWS sam cli and Docker (see this link to install the SAM cli), to build the packages inside a container. Basically you initialize a default template with Python as runtime and then you specify the packages under the requirements.txt file. I found it more easy than the article you mentioned. I let you steps if you want to consider them for future use.
1. Initialize a default SAM template
Under any folder that you want to keep the project, you can type
sam init
this will prompt a series of questions, for a quick set up we will be choosing the Quick Start Templates as follows
1 - AWS Quick Start Templates
2 - Python 3.8
Project name [sam-app]: your_project_name
1 - Hello World Example
By choosing the Hello World Example it generates a default lambda function with a requirements.txt file. Now, we're going to edit with the name of the package that you want, in this case xgboost
2. Specify packages to install
cd your_project_name
code hello_world/requirements.txt
as I have Visual Studio Code as editor, this will open the file on it. Now, I can specify the xgboost package
your_python_package
Here comes the reason to have Docker installed. Some packages relied on C++. Thus, it is recommended to build inside a container (case on Windows). Now, move to the folder where the template.yaml file is located. Then, type
sam build -u
3. Zip packages
there are some files that you do not want to be included in your lambda layer, because we only want to keep the python libraries. Thus, you could remove the following files
rm .aws-sam/build/HelloWorldFunction/app.py
rm .aws-sam/build/HelloWorldFunction/__init__.py
rm .aws-sam/build/HelloWorldFunction/requirements.txt
and then zip the remaining content of the folder.
cp -r .aws-sam/build/HelloWorldFunction/ python/
zip -r my_layer.zip python/
where we place the layer in the python/ folder according to the docs
On Windows system the zip command should be replaced with
Compress-Archive my_layer/ my_layer.zip.
4. Upload your Layer to AWS
On AWS go to Lambda, then choose Layers and Create Layer. Now, you can upload your .zip file as the image below shows
Notice that for zip files over 50 MB, you should upload the .zip file to an s3 bucket and provide the path, for exampl, https://s3:amazonaws.com//mybucket/my_layer.zip.
B. Python packages that exceeds Lambda Layer limits
The xgboost package on its own is more than 300 MB and will throw the following error
As #Marcin has kindly pointed out, the prior approach with SAM cli would not directly work for Python layers that exceed the limit. There's an open issue on github to specify a custom docker image when running sam build -u and a possible solution retagging the default lambda/lambci image.
So, how could we pass through this?. There are already some useful resources that I would just point to.
First, the Medium article that #Alex took as solution that follow this repo code.
Second, alexeybutyrev approach that works by applying the strip command to reduce the libraries sizes. One can find this approach under a github repo, the instructions are provided.
Edit (December 2020)
This month AWS releases container Image support for AWS Lambda. Following the next tree structure for your project
Project/
|-- app/
| |-- app.py
| |-- requirements.txt
| |-- xgb_trained.bin
|-- Dockerfile
You can deploy an XGBoost model with the following Docker image. Follow this repo instructions for a detailed explanation.
# Dockerfile based on https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/images-create.html
# Define global args
ARG FUNCTION_DIR="/function"
ARG RUNTIME_VERSION="3.6"
# Choose buster image
FROM python:${RUNTIME_VERSION}-buster as base-image
# Install aws-lambda-cpp build dependencies
RUN apt-get update && \
apt-get install -y \
g++ \
make \
cmake \
unzip \
libcurl4-openssl-dev \
git
# Include global arg in this stage of the build
ARG FUNCTION_DIR
# Create function directory
RUN mkdir -p ${FUNCTION_DIR}
# Copy function code
COPY app/* ${FUNCTION_DIR}/
# Install python dependencies and runtime interface client
RUN python${RUNTIME_VERSION} -m pip install \
--target ${FUNCTION_DIR} \
--no-cache-dir \
awslambdaric \
-r ${FUNCTION_DIR}/requirements.txt
# Install xgboost from source
RUN git clone --recursive https://github.com/dmlc/xgboost
RUN cd xgboost; make -j4; cd python-package; python${RUNTIME_VERSION} setup.py install; cd;
# Multi-stage build: grab a fresh copy of the base image
FROM base-image
# Include global arg in this stage of the build
ARG FUNCTION_DIR
# Set working directory to function root directory
WORKDIR ${FUNCTION_DIR}
# Copy in the build image dependencies
COPY --from=base-image ${FUNCTION_DIR} ${FUNCTION_DIR}
ENTRYPOINT [ "/usr/local/bin/python", "-m", "awslambdaric" ]
CMD [ "app.handler" ]
So I was never able to figure out why it failed in this way. The solution I found that worked was to create an EC2 instance running amazon linux, install and zip the libraries there, then save to S3. See here for detailed instructions:
https://medium.com/#lucashenriquessilva/how-to-create-a-aws-lambda-python-layer-db2830e08b12
I am using:
mkdir -p build/python/lib/python3.6/site-packages
pipenv run pip install -r requirements.txt --target build/python/lib/python3.6/site-packages
to create a directory build with everything I need for my python project but I also need to save as much space as possible.
What can I safely remove in order to save space?
Maybe can I do find build -type d -iname "*.dist-info" -exec rm -R {} \; ?
Can I remove *.py if I leave *.pyc?
Thanks
Perhaps platform specific *.exe files, if your project doesn't need to run on Windows:
How to prevent *.exe ...
Delete *.pyc (byte-compiled files), with an impact to load-time: 100% supported, unlike your trick of the reverse: retain just *.pyc (and delete most *.py sources) in some python versions; not safe IMHO but never tried it.
I started learning python recently and I am very new to programming.
My book tells the following :
On Unix-based systems (including Mac OS X and Linux), your working directory might be in /usr/home and be created by a mkdir command in a shell window or file explorer GUI specific to your platform, but the same concepts apply. The Cyg- win Unix-like system for Windows is similar too, though your directory names may vary (/home and /cygdrive/c are candidates).
I am running python on a Mac OS X and I am finding hard to create a directory.
What code should I type in the Terminal ?
I tried :
mkdir
It says :usage: mkdir [-pv] [-m mode] directory ...
cd c: mkdir
It outputs : -bash: cd: c:: No such file or directory
Please help me
Thanks
mkdir mydir creates a directory called mydir; then you could change directory like cd mydir. To get further information you could check out the man page for mkdir using man mkdir from your terminal. I'm not really sure what you mean with working directory. The pwd command prints out the current working directory, i. e. the directory you are currently standing in. – Cyclone
For making directory in mac use below command:
mkdir nameOfDir
If you want to check directory then use below command:
cd nameOfDir
The problem is with the name you want to use for your directory. If the name contains any characters as '#', '$' etc., then it might be considered as another command in the bash. Try to name your directory using only lowercase alphabets and underscores because of its convention(at least as far as I know).
If you want to still name it using some unconventional characters then use '' to tell the machine that it should not be considered as a command. It might look something like this.
$ mkdir \#659div2
Here character '#' is the unconventional character. Or like this
$ mkdir images\ from\ tour
Here character ' '(space) is an unconventional character.