Podman says a directory doesn't exist when it does while copying

Question

I'm getting stuck on a Dockerfile with:

[2/2] STEP 31/42: COPY /opt/SIMULATeQCD/src /simulateqcd/src
Error: error building at STEP "COPY /opt/SIMULATeQCD/src /simulateqcd/src": checking on sources under "/opt/SIMULATeQCD/podman-build": copier: stat: "/opt/SIMULATeQCD/src": no such file or directory

However, it does exist so I am baffled as to what podman is looking for:

[grant@simulateqcd podman-build]$ ls -al /opt/SIMULATeQCD/src
total 144
drwxr-xr-x. 12 grant grant  4096 Apr 14 16:23 .
drwxr-xr-x.  3 root  root     25 Apr 14 16:20 ..
-rw-r--r--.  1 grant grant 52854 Apr 14 16:09 CMakeLists.txt
-rwxr-xr-x.  1 grant grant   126 Apr 14 16:09 cmake.sh

I've spent the better part of 45 minutes playing with the context, checking the permissions, turning off SELinux, and am at a loss as to what else to check. I've given it an absolute path everywhere I can think to look but it still says the path doesn't exist.

Everything is owned by 1000:1000 everywhere. Context directory is /opt/SIMULATeQCD, Dockerfile is in /opt/SIMULATeQCD/podman-build. I'm running the Dockerfile like this:

      podman build \
        --tag simulateqcd/simulateqcd:latest \
        --label name=simulateqcd \
        --build-arg CORES=${CORES} \
        --build-arg RHEL_VERSION=${RHEL_VERSION} \
        --build-arg CUDA_VERSION=${CUDA_VERSION} \
        --build-arg USERNAME=${USERNAME} \
        --build-arg GROUPNAME=${GROUPNAME} \
        --build-arg USER_ID=${USER_ID} \
        --build-arg GROUP_ID=${GROUP_ID} \
        --build-arg DIRECTORY=$topdir \
        -f $scriptdir/Dockerfile
        /opt/SIMULATeQCD

Is there something else I'm missing maybe?

Update

The Dockerfile is here

COPY ./src /simulateqcd/src
COPY ./CMakeLists.txt /simulateqcd/CMakeLists.txt
COPY ./parameter /simulateqcd/parameter
COPY ./scripts /simulateqcd/scripts
COPY ./test_conf /simulateqcd/test_conf

The script is run from this line

      podman build \
        --tag simulateqcd/simulateqcd:latest \
        --label name=simulateqcd \
        --build-arg CORES=${CORES} \
        --build-arg RHEL_VERSION=${RHEL_VERSION} \
        --build-arg CUDA_VERSION=${CUDA_VERSION} \
        --build-arg USERNAME=${USERNAME} \
        --build-arg GROUPNAME=${GROUPNAME} \
        --build-arg USER_ID=${USER_ID} \
        --build-arg GROUP_ID=${GROUP_ID} \
        --build-arg ARCHITECTURE=${ARCHITECTURE} \
        --build-arg USE_GPU_AWARE_MPI=${USE_GPU_AWARE_MPI} \
        --build-arg USE_GPU_P2P=${USE_GPU_P2P} \
        --build-arg TARGET=${TARGET} \
        -f $scriptdir/Dockerfile
        $topdir

where $topdir = /opt/SIMULATeQCD and $scriptdir=/opt/SIMULATeQCD/podman-build. src is located at /opt/SIMUALTeQCD/src

Running ./simulateqcd build gets you:

Error: error building at STEP "COPY ./src /simulateqcd/src": checking on sources under "/opt/SIMULATeQCD/podman-build": copier: stat: "/src": no such file or directory
./simulate_qcd.sh: line 285: /opt/SIMULATeQCD: Is a directory

Answer 1

The two relevant aspects for the question are the Dockerfile path, which can be provided with the -f option and the build context, which is the last argument in the build command.

When a context is set in the podman build command, all subsequent COPY instructions inside the Dockerfile are relative to the context path.

Assuming you have the following directory structure:

.
├── opt
│   └── SIMULATeQCD
│       └── src
│           ├── CMakeLists.txt
│           └── cmake.sh
└── scripts
    └── Dockerfile

If you run the build command like this:

podman build -f scripts/Dockerfile -t alpine-context-so-img opt/SIMULATeQCD/src/

Then the Dockerfile should COPY files as if the current working directory on the host machine was /opt/SIMULATeQCD/src:

FROM alpine:3.14
WORKDIR /target-path-in-container
# Next line is valid and also copies the two files
# COPY . . 
# But for better exemplification, I am copying each
# file verbosely:
COPY ./cmake.sh .
COPY ./CMakeLists.txt .
ENTRYPOINT [ "ls", "/target-path-in-container"]

Now if you run the container, the two files should be found in the container:

$ podman run alpine-context-so-img
CMakeLists.txt
cmake.sh