How to include files outside of Docker's build context?

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, https://github.com/docker/cli/pull/886). 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.

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.