docker-compose IOError: Can not access file in context

Question

Docker build will build and run the image, but during docker-compose I get the following error:

    > .\docker-compose-Windows-x86_64.exe -f C:\t\tea\docker-compose.yml up
Building web
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "docker-compose", line 6, in <module>
  File "compose\cli\main.py", line 71, in main
  File "compose\cli\main.py", line 127, in perform_command
  File "compose\cli\main.py", line 1039, in up
  File "compose\cli\main.py", line 1035, in up
  File "compose\project.py", line 465, in up
  File "compose\service.py", line 327, in ensure_image_exists
  File "compose\service.py", line 999, in build
  File "site-packages\docker\api\build.py", line 149, in build
  File "site-packages\docker\utils\build.py", line 15, in tar
  File "site-packages\docker\utils\utils.py", line 100, in create_archive
  File "tarfile.py", line 1802, in gettarinfo
  FileNotFoundError: [WinError 3] The system cannot find the path specified: 
  'C:\\t\\tea\\src\\app\\accSettings\\account-settings-main\\components\\account-settings-catalog\\components\\account-settings-copy-catalog-main\\components\\account-settings-copy-catalog-destination\\components\\account-settings-copy-destination-table\\account-settings-copy-destination-table.component.html'
[18400] Failed to execute script docker-compose

> docker -v
Docker version 18.03.0-ce-rc1, build c160c73
> docker-compose -v
docker-compose version 1.19.0, build 9e633ef3

I've enabled Win32 long paths in my local group policy editor, but not having any luck solving this issue.

Here is the docker-compose.yml if it helps:

version: '3'

services:
  web:
    image: web
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: Dockerfile

Answer 1

This is a known issue under some circumstances with docker-compose. And, it is related to the MAX_PATH limitation of 260 characters on Windows.

Exerpt from the Microsoft docs on Maximum Path Length Limitation

In the Windows API (with some exceptions discussed in the following paragraphs), the maximum length for a path is MAX_PATH, which is defined as 260 characters.

From reading up on this, it seems that the solution depends on your docker-compose version and Windows version. Here's a summary of the solutions that I have found:

Solution #1

Upgrade to docker-compose version 1.23.0 or beyond. There is a bugfix in the 1.23.0 release described as:

Fixed an issue where paths longer than 260 characters on Windows clients would cause docker-compose build to fail.

Solution #2

Enable NTFS long paths:

1. Hit the Windows key, type gpedit.msc and press Enter.
2. Navigate to Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Filesystem > NTFS.
3. Double click the Enable NTFS long paths option and enable it.

If you're using a version of Windows that does not provide access to Group Policy, you can edit the registry instead.

1. Hit the Windows key, type regedit and press Enter.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Group Policy Objects\ {48981759-12F2-42A6-A048-028B3973495F} Machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Policies
3. Select the LongPathsEnabled key, or create it as a DWORD (32-bit) value if it does not exist.
4. Set the value to 1 and close the Registry Editor.

Solution #3

Install docker-compose via pip. This seems to have solve the issue for others that have come across this.

Expert from the docker-compose documentation:

For alpine, the following dependency packages are needed: py-pip, python-dev, libffi-dev, openssl-dev, gcc, libc-dev, and make.

Compose can be installed from pypi using pip. If you install using pip, we recommend that you use a virtualenv because many operating systems have python system packages that conflict with docker-compose dependencies. See the virtualenv tutorial to get started.

pip install docker-compose

If you are not using virtualenv,

sudo pip install docker-compose

pip version 6.0 or greater is required.