Mount current directory as a volume in Docker on Windows 10

Question

In Windows Command Line (cmd), you can mount the current directory like so:

docker run --rm -it -v %cd%:/usr/src/project gcc:4.9

In PowerShell, you use ${PWD}, which gives you the current directory:

docker run --rm -it -v ${PWD}:/usr/src/project gcc:4.9

On Linux:

docker run --rm -it -v $(pwd):/usr/src/project gcc:4.9

Cross Platform

The following options will work on both PowerShell and on Linux (at least Ubuntu):

docker run --rm -it -v ${PWD}:/usr/src/project gcc:4.9
docker run --rm -it -v $(pwd):/usr/src/project gcc:4.9

This works for me in PowerShell:

docker run --rm -v ${PWD}:/data alpine ls /data

1. Open Settings on Docker Desktop (Docker for Windows).
2. Select Shared Drives.
3. Select the drive that you want to use inside your containers (e.g., C).

4. Click Apply. You may be asked to provide user credentials.

5. The command below should now work on PowerShell (command prompt does not support ${PWD}):

   docker run --rm -v ${PWD}:/data alpine ls /data

IMPORTANT: if/when you change your Windows domain password, the mount will stop working silently, that is, -v will work but the container will not see your host folders and files. Solution: go back to Settings, uncheck the shared drives, Apply, check them again, Apply, and enter the new password when prompted.

For Git Bash for Windows (in ConEmu), the following works for me (for Docker Windows containers):

docker run --rm -it -v `pwd -W`:c:/api microsoft/dotnet:2-runtime

Note the backticks/backquotes around pwd -W!

With all other variations of PWD I've tried I've received: "Error response from daemon: invalid volume specification: ..."

Update: The above was for Docker Windows containers, for Linux containers use:

docker run --rm -it -v `pwd -W`:/api -p 8080:80 microsoft/aspnetcore:2

Command prompt (Cmd.exe)

When the Docker CLI is used from the Windows Cmd.exe, use %cd% to mount the current directory:

echo test > test.txt
docker run --rm -v %cd%:/data busybox ls -ls /data/test.txt

Git Bash (MinGW)

When the Docker CLI is used from the Git Bash (MinGW), mounting the current directory may fail due to a POSIX path conversion: Docker mounted volume adds ;C to end of windows path when translating from linux style path.

Escape the POSIX paths by prefixing with /

To skip the path conversion, POSIX paths have to be prefixed with the slash (/) to have leading double slash (//), including /$(pwd)

touch test.txt
docker run --rm -v /$(pwd):/data busybox ls -la //data/test.txt

Disable the path conversion

Disable the POSIX path conversion in Git Bash (MinGW) by setting MSYS_NO_PATHCONV=1 environment variable at the command level

touch test.txt
MSYS_NO_PATHCONV=1 docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/data busybox ls -la /data/test.txt

or shell (system) level

export MSYS_NO_PATHCONV=1
touch test.txt
docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/data busybox ls -la /data/test.txt

Here is mine which is compatible for both Win10 docker-ce & Win7 docker-toolbox. At las at the time I'm writing this :).

You can notice I prefer use /host_mnt/c instead of c:/ because I sometimes encountered trouble on docker-ce Win 10 with c:/

$WIN_PATH=Convert-Path .

#Convert for docker mount to be OK on Windows10 and Windows 7 Powershell
#Exact conversion is : remove the ":" symbol, replace all "\" by "/", remove last "/" and minor case only the disk letter
#Then for Windows10, add a /host_mnt/" at the begin of string => this way : c:\Users is translated to /host_mnt/c/Users
#For Windows7, add "//" => c:\Users is translated to //c/Users
$MOUNT_PATH=(($WIN_PATH -replace "\\","/") -replace ":","").Trim("/")

[regex]$regex='^[a-zA-Z]/'
$MOUNT_PATH=$regex.Replace($MOUNT_PATH, {$args[0].Value.ToLower()})

#Win 10
if ([Environment]::OSVersion.Version -ge (new-object 'Version' 10,0)) {
$MOUNT_PATH="/host_mnt/$MOUNT_PATH"
}
elseif ([Environment]::OSVersion.Version -ge (new-object 'Version' 6,1)) {
$MOUNT_PATH="//$MOUNT_PATH"
}

docker run -it -v "${MOUNT_PATH}:/tmp/test" busybox ls /tmp/test