Dockerfile copy keep subdirectory structure - copy

Question

I'm trying to copy a number of files and folders to a docker image build from my localhost.
The files are like this:
folder1/
file1
file2
folder2/
file1
file2
I'm trying to make the copy like this:
COPY files/* /files/
However, all of the files from folder1/ and folder2/ are placed in /files/ directly, without their folders:
files/
file1
file2
Is there a way in Docker to keep the subdirectory structure as well as copying the files into their directories? Like this:
files/
folder1/
file1
file2
folder2/
file1
file2

Answer 1

Remove star from COPY, with this Dockerfile:
FROM ubuntu
COPY files/ /files/
RUN ls -la /files/*
Structure is there:
$ docker build .
Sending build context to Docker daemon 5.632 kB
Sending build context to Docker daemon
Step 0 : FROM ubuntu
---> d0955f21bf24
Step 1 : COPY files/ /files/
---> 5cc4ae8708a6
Removing intermediate container c6f7f7ec8ccf
Step 2 : RUN ls -la /files/*
---> Running in 08ab9a1e042f
/files/folder1:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 13 16:04 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 May 13 16:05 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 May 13 16:04 file1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 May 13 16:04 file2
/files/folder2:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 13 16:04 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 May 13 16:05 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 May 13 16:04 file1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 May 13 16:04 file2
---> 03ff0a5d0e4b
Removing intermediate container 08ab9a1e042f
Successfully built 03ff0a5d0e4b

Answer 2

Alternatively you can use a "." instead of *, as this will take all the files in the working directory, include the folders and subfolders:
FROM ubuntu
COPY . /
RUN ls -la /

Answer 3

To merge a local directory into a directory within an image, do this.
It will not delete files already present within the image. It will only add files that are present locally, overwriting the files in the image if a file of the same name already exists.
COPY ./local-path/. /image-path/

Answer 4

I could not get any of these answers to work for me. I had to add a dot for the current directory, so that the working docker file looks like:
FROM ubuntu
WORKDIR /usr/local
COPY files/ ./files/
Also using RUN ls to verify wasn't working for me and getting it to work was looking really involved, a much easier way to verify what is in the docker file is to run an interactive shell and check out what is in there, using docker run -it <tagname> sh.

Answer 5

If you want to copy a source directory entirely with the same directory structure,
Then don't use a star(*). Write COPY command in Dockerfile as below.
COPY . destinatio-directory/