Docker + Stack + Symlinks = Errors

The Problem

Using stack’s awesome docker integration I got an unexpected error.

> stack build
/home/kondy/.stack/config.yaml: openBinaryFile: does not exist (No such file or directory)

After poking around for a bit I discovered that it was my symlinked dotfiles causing the error, not docker or stack.

Running the build with the --verbose command to gain some further insight

> stack build --verbose
2016-04-12 15:25:34.077559: [debug] Run process: /usr/bin/docker start -a -i a401a0b1a6c48774f175acf8c2ff83279f0641f5fdb6df62be586b6c7348de0c @(stack_5xoCB8Vl1plFNNNfk8BYdK:System.Process.Run src/System/Process/Run.hs:105:5)

We see the error is proceeded by a docker start command. The long command above this in the verbose build output it the docker create command, which contains the following volume mount..

-v /home/kondy/.stack:/home/kondy/.stack

This maps my stack dotfiles to a same folder in stack’s docker build container. I have stack.yaml symlinked to ~/.stack.

lrwxrwxrwx  1 kondy   56 Apr 12 15:22 config.yaml -> /home/kondy/src/dotfiles/apps/stack/config.yaml

Checking the mounted /home/kondy/.stack folder from within docker shows config.yaml again symlinked to /home/kondy/src/dotfiles/apps/stack/config.yaml, which doesn’t not exist in the docker container.

Work Around

For now I have simply remove the symlink from my dotfiles. The files changes infrequently enough to make this a passable solution for now. This is a known limitation of docker and is not planned to be fixed in the future.