Let’s learn how to fix the “docker unable to prepare context: unable to evaluate symlinks in Dockerfile path errors” on your Windows or Linux machine.

Are you trying to use the Docker file to automate the configuration on docker-compose? If so, you might be plagued by this issue, which you can fix in no time.

There are only a few things you need to do to fix this error.

I won’t take much time of yours, so let’s get right to the solution, where you’ll learn how to resolve the Docker – unable to prepare context: unable to evaluate symlinks in Dockerfile path errors on your Windows or Linux machine.

How to Resolve Docker: Unable to Prepare Context: Unable to Evaluate Symlinks in the Dockerfile Path

First of all, this error is very simple; you just need to have the correct name of the Docker file configuration, and the second thing is that this error may also occur because you are not providing the right path where the Docker file configuration is located in your system, which can trigger the error “unable to prepare context.”

So first of all, go to the directory where the Docker configuration file is present and check that the Docker filename is the same as shown here: “Dockerfile,”  “dockerfile,” and don’t save the file with any kind of extension.

If the name of the Docker file is not one of those listed above, you must rename it using one of those rules before trying to run the command that caused the error.

And if the problem still occurs, then you need to be sure that you are providing the right path for Docker configuration, and if you are already at the path where the file is located, then you should use a period (.) to indicate that the file is located in this current directory.

$ docker build -t dockerfile .

Also Read: What are the Absolute and Relative paths, and why do we use them?

That’s all for this short post, where you learned how to fix Docker being unable to prepare context on your Linux machine.

However, if you continue to receive the error, please let me know, and I will do my best to help you out.

See you in the next article.