[docker] Docker build gives "unable to prepare context: context must be a directory: /Users/tempUser/git/docker/Dockerfile"

I have a Dockerfile that is supposed to build an Ubuntu image. But whenever I run

docker build -t ubuntu-test:latest ./Dockerfile

it shows the following error on the console

unable to prepare context: context must be a directory: /Users/tempUser/git/docker/Dockerfile

I'm on Mac OsX. I tried to sudo as well. Nothing works.

Understand contexts

The docker build command

The basic syntax of docker's build command is

docker build -t imagename:imagetag context_dir

The context

The context is a directory and determines what the docker build process is going to see: From the Dockerfile's point of view, any file context_dir/mydir/myfile in your filesystem will become /mydir/myfile in the Dockerfile and hence during the build process.

The dockerfile

If the dockerfile is called Dockerfile and lives in the context, it will be found implicitly by naming convention. That's nice, because it means you can usually find the Dockerfile in any docker container immediately.

If you insist on using different name, say "/tmp/mydockerfile", you can use -f like this:

docker build -t imagename:imagetag -f /tmp/mydockerfile context_dir

but then the dockerfile will not be in the same folder or at least will be harder to find.

One of the reasons for me getting an error was the file name make sure the file name is Dockerfile So i figured it out, hope it might help someone.

It's simple, whenever Docker build is run, docker wants to know, what's the image name, so we need to pass -t : . Now make sure you are in the same directory where you have your Dockerfile and run

docker build -t <image_name>:<version> . Example docker build -t my_apache:latest . assuming you are in the same directory as your Dockerfile otherwise pass -f flag and the Dockerfile.

docker build -t my_apache:latest -f ~/Users/documents/myapache/Dockerfile

To specify a Dockerfile when build, you can use:

docker build -t ubuntu-test:latest - < /path/to/your/Dockerfile

But it'll fail if there's ADD or COPY command that depends on relative path. There're many ways to specify a context for docker build, you can refer to docs of docker build for more info.

I face the same issue. I am using docker version:17.09.0-ce.

I follow below steps:

1. Create Dockerfile and added commands for creating docker image
2. Go to directory where we have created Dockfile
3. execute below command $ sudo docker build -t ubuntu-test:latest .

It resolved issue and image created successsfully.

Note: build command depend on docker version as well as which build option we are using. :)

You can also run docker build with -f option

docker build -t ubuntu-test:latest -f Dockerfile.custom .