How to build windows server core on Windows 10 Pro?

Question

I have the following basic Dockerfile:

FROM mcr.microsoft.com/windows/servercore:1903
CMD echo Hello World!

When I run the command:

docker build -t latest . or docker build .

My terminal hangs forever and it seems like nothing is being done.

However, if I run:

docker pull mcr.microsoft.com/windows/servercore:1903

I can pull the image from the repository.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, or how to fix it. The build command doesn't seem to have a verbose option, and I need a docker container running Windows.

I'm using Docker in Windows 10 Pro and its configured to use Windows containers.

Answer 1

Check which directory do you execute your commands from. You shall be executing them from directory where DOCKERFILE is located and nothing else. If you execute say from root of C drive or any other location with big number of files then docker as a first step will try to zip all of them up and then send to a builder and hence delays.