Answer by jrasm91 for How to include files outside of Docker's build context?

How to share typescript code between two Dockerfiles

I had this same problem, but for sharing files between two typescript projects. Some of the other answers didn't work for me because I needed to preserve the relative import paths between the shared code. I solved it by organizing my code like this:

api/  Dockerfile  src/    models/      index.tsfrontend/  Dockerfile  src/    models/      index.tsshared/  model1.ts  model2.ts  index.ts.dockerignore

Note: After extracting the shared code into that top folder, I avoided needing to update the import paths because I updated api/models/index.ts and frontend/models/index.ts to export from shared: (eg export * from '../../../shared)

Since the build context is now one directory higher, I had to make a few additional changes:

1. Update the build command to use the new context:

   docker build -f Dockerfile .. (two dots instead of one)

2. Use a single .dockerignore at the top level to exclude all node_modules. (eg **/node_modules/**)

3. Prefix the DockerfileCOPY commands with api/ or frontend/

4. Copy shared (in addition to api/src or frontend/src)

   WORKDIR /usr/src/appCOPY api/package*.json ./     <---- Prefix with api/RUN npm ciCOPY api/src api/ts*.json ./  <---- Prefix with api/COPY shared usr/src/shared    <---- ADDEDRUN npm run build

This was the easiest way I could send everything to docker, while preserving the relative import paths in both projects. The tricky (annoying) part was all the changes/consequences caused by the build context being up one directory.