copy directories in docker container excluding any one directory

Question

I am having some directories/files, and I want to copy all directories/files except my_data directory from host to Docker container. The command mentioned below is working fine and is fulfilling my purpose to copy all the directories/files in the container:

docker cp ./ container_name:/my-dir

I want to copy all the directories/files from host to container except my_data dir. How can I do that?

Answer 1

For now, there is no such way to do a --exclude while doing a docker cp. If you have a Dockerfile, you can achieve this by using .dockerignore.

Below is what i can suggest now as a quick hack/workaround -

mkdir /tmp/to_be_copied

rsync -avzh ./ /tmp/to_be_copied --exclude my_data

docker cp /tmp/to_be_copied 0132381bc8d6:/my_dir

rm -rf /tmp/to_be_copied

You need to just copy your folder structure to a different location by using rsync with the directory my_data excluded.Post this and you will be able to easily use docker cp with the newly created directory, and also do not forget to cleanup at the end so that it do not cause any issue.

Answer 2

Follow these steps:

Step 1- make a file called temp in the temp directory

Step 2- copy all the files to temp, except the one you don’t need.

Step 3- copy all these files from temp to the location you want to copy.

Step 4- delete the folder temp.

Answer 3

Create a file .dockerignore in your docker build context directory with the following line in  it:

**/node_modules

Answer 4

You can use the .dockerignore file.

The CLI interprets the .dockerignore file as a newline-separated list of patterns similar to the file globs of Unix shells. For the purposes of matching, the root of the context is considered to be both the working and the root directory. For example, the patterns /foo/bar and foo/bar both exclude a file or directory named bar in the foo subdirectory of PATH or in the root of the git repository located at URL. Neither excludes anything else.

Answer 5

Here is an example .dockerignore file:

# comment
*/temp*
*/*/temp*
temp?

Answer 6

One of the way could be copy and prune. Copy everything and delete whatever is not needed.