Besides simply using the command line, mounting directories is quite painful when using docker on Windows. Therefore, I tend to use WSL to run my docker commands. Still, auto-complete of local file and directories (when using docker’s -v option) is quite helpful. Here is a little bit of information on getting filesystem auto-complete while using docker in WSL.
For my local setup, I use Virtual Box and Docker Toolbox to run docker in a linux VM and you can find how I linked WSL with that VM in my other post.
My final goal was to be able to do a simple:
docker run –rm -v /mnt/d/data:/data -i -t calestar/ebook-utils COMMAND
where autocomplete for local directories (/mnt/d/data) works correctly in WSL.
In order to get to that point, I needed one simple thing: have part of the Windows filesystem mounted in the same directory on both (a) the linux VM and (b) WSL. Luckily for me WSL already links to the Windows filesystem: the D: drive is automatically mounted as /mnt/d.
Next step was to get the linux VM to get access to the files in the D: drive, and have them under /mnt/d. This part is specific to VirtualBox, I’m quite certain this can be done using Hyper-V (and Docker for Windows), but I haven’t tried it.
VirtualBox configuration
First thing to do is open VirtualBox and find the VM that is used by docker. In order to get the name of the VM to modify, open a Windows command prompt and run docker- machine env. In the output, you will find a a value associated with DOCKER_MACHINE_NAME. You will now shutdown the VM in order to modify it. To do so, simple right-click on the VM and select Close->ACPI Shutdown and confirm that you want to shut down the VM. With the VM shutdown, right-click on it and select Settings.
In the settings page, go into the Shared Folders category. This page is where the magic happens. You will need to add a new shared folder. The folder path is the path on you Windows filesystem (D: for me). The name of the share is in fact the path on the linux VM where docker runs (/mnt/d for me).
With this configuration done, it is time to start the VM once again. To do so, select your VM from the main menu, right-click on it and select Start->Headless Start.
It might take a little bit of time before the VM is up-and-running, but it should all be working now.