How to fix ”unable to prepare context: unable to evaluate symlinks in Dockerfile path” error in circleci - amazon-web-services

Question

I'm setting up circle-ci to automatically build/deploy to AWS ECR &ECS.
But build is failed due to no Dockerfile.
Maybe this is because I set docker-compose for multiple docker images.
But I don't know how to resolve this issue.
Is there no way to make DockerFile instead of docker-compose?
front: React
backend: Golang
ci-tool: circle-ci
db: mysql
article
　├ .circleci
　├ client
　├ api
　└ docker-compose.yml
I set .circleci/config.yml.
version: 2.1
orbs:
aws-ecr: circleci/aws-ecr#6.0.0
aws-ecs: circleci/aws-ecs#0.0.8
workflows:
build_and_push_image:
jobs:
- aws-ecr/build-and-push-image:
region: AWS_REGION
account-url: AWS_ECR_ACCOUNT_URL
repo: 'article-ecr-jpskgc'
tag: '${CIRCLE_SHA1}'
- aws-ecs/deploy-service-update:
requires:
- aws-ecr/build-and-push-image
family: 'article-task-jpskgc'
cluster-name: 'article-cluster-jpskgc'
service-name: 'article-service-jpskgc'
container-image-name-updates: 'container=article-container-jpskgc,tag=${CIRCLE_SHA1}'
Here is the source code in github.
https://github.com/jpskgc/article
I expect build/deploy via circle-ci to ECR/ECS to success, but it actually fails.
This is the error log on circle-ci.
Build docker image
Exit code: 1
#!/bin/bash -eo pipefail
docker build \
\
-f Dockerfile \
-t $AWS_ECR_ACCOUNT_URL/article-ecr-jpskgc:${CIRCLE_SHA1} \
.
unable to prepare context: unable to evaluate symlinks in Dockerfile path: lstat /home/circleci/project/Dockerfile: no such file or directory
Exited with code 1

Answer 1

You must use a Dockerfile, check out the documentation for the orb you are using. Please read through them here. Also docker-compose ≠ docker, therefore I will confirm that one cannot be used in substitution for the other.
Given your docker-compose.yml, I have a few suggestions for your general setup and CI.
For reference here is the docker-compose.yml in question:
version: '3'
services:
db:
image: mysql
ports:
- '3306:3306'
environment:
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: root
MYSQL_DATABASE: article
MYSQL_USER: docker
MYSQL_PASSWORD: docker
nginx:
restart: always
build:
dockerfile: Dockerfile.dev
context: ./nginx
ports:
- '3050:80'
api:
build:
dockerfile: Dockerfile.dev
context: ./api
volumes:
- ./api:/app
ports:
- 2345:2345
depends_on:
- db
tty: true
environment:
- AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
- AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
client:
build:
dockerfile: Dockerfile.dev
context: ./client
volumes:
- /app/node_modules
- ./client:/app
ports:
- 3000:3000
From the above we have the various components, just as you have stated:
MySQL Database
Nginx Loadbalancer
Client App
API Server
Here are my recommendations for each component:
MySQL Database
Since you are deploying to AWS I recommend deploying a MySQL instance on the free tier, please follow this documentation: https://aws.amazon.com/rds/free. With this you can remove your database from CI, which is recommended as ECS is not the ideal service to run a MySQL server.
Nginx Loadbalancer
Because you are using ECS, this is not required as AWS handles all load balancing for you and is redundant.
Client App
Because this is a react application, you shouldn't deploy to ECS -- this is not cost effective you would rather deploy this to Amazon S3. There are many resources on how to do this. You may follow this guide though you may have to make a few change based of the structure of your repository.
This will reduce your overall cost and it makes more sense than an entire Docker container running just to serve static files.
API Server
This is the only thing that should be running in ECS, and all you need to do is point to the correct Dockerfile in your configuration for it be built and pushed successfully.
You may therefore edit your circle ci config as follows, assuming we are using the same Dockerfile in your docker-compose.yml:
build_and_push_image:
jobs:
- aws-ecr/build-and-push-image:
region: AWS_REGION
dockerfile: Dockerfile.dev
path: ./api
account-url: AWS_ECR_ACCOUNT_URL
repo: 'article-ecr-jpskgc'
tag: '${CIRCLE_SHA1}'
Things to Note
My answer does not include:
How to load balance your API service please follow these docs on how to do so: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/service-load-balancing.html
Details on setting up the MySQL server, it assumed you will follow the AWS documentation provided above.
Things you must do:
Point your client app to the API server, this will probably require a code change from what I've seen.
I want to stress that you must Load balance your API server according to these docs yet again.
You do not need to edit your docker-compose.yml