Docker: adding a file from a parent directory

Question

You can build the Dockerfile from the parent directory:

docker build -t <some tag> -f <dir/dir/Dockerfile> .

With docker-compose, you could set context folder:

#docker-compose.yml
version: '3.3'    
services:
      yourservice:
        build:
          context: ./
          dockerfile: ./docker/yourservice/Dockerfile

Unfortunately, (for practical and security reasons I guess), if you want to add/copy local content, it must be located under the same root path than the Dockerfile.

From the documentation:

The <src> 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.

EDIT: There's now an option (-f) to set the path of your Dockerfile ; it can be used to achieve what you want, see @Boedy 's response.

Adding some code snippets to support the accepted answer.

Directory structure :

setup/
 |__docker/DockerFile
 |__target/scripts/<myscripts.sh>
src/
 |__<my source files>

Docker file entry:

RUN mkdir -p /home/vagrant/dockerws/chatServerInstaller/scripts/
RUN mkdir -p /home/vagrant/dockerws/chatServerInstaller/src/
WORKDIR /home/vagrant/dockerws/chatServerInstaller

#Copy all the required files from host's file system to the container file system.
COPY setup/target/scripts/install_x.sh scripts/
COPY setup/target/scripts/install_y.sh scripts/
COPY src/ src/

Command used to build the docker image

docker build -t test:latest -f setup/docker/Dockerfile .

Since -f caused another problem, I developed another solution.

• Create a base image in the parent folder
• Added the required files.
• Used this image as a base image for the project which in a descendant folder.

The -f flag does not solved my problem because my onbuild image looks for a file in a folder and had to call like this:

-f foo/bar/Dockerfile foo/bar

instead of

-f foo/bar/Dockerfile .

Also note that this is only solution for some cases as -f flag