Docker is a nice way to bring executables onto my laptop which I don’t want to install in the local filesystem (to prevent bit rod). Examples could be running jekyll from within docker or the new Elixir 1.6 code formatter in docker.
On my Windows box, I have docker for Windows installed, which expects volume mount parameters in the form of -v C:/Users/chgeuer/Desktop:/mnt, i.e. the local laptop’s filesystem path is the Windows-style path with a drive letter, and the backslashes substituted by forward slashes.
On the Linux side of things, people usually mount the current working directory by specifying -v $(pwd):/mnt. When I run that on the Windows subsystem for Linux (or is the the Linux subsystem for Windows?), that expands to -v /mnt/c/Users/chgeuer/Desktop:/mnt. That /mnt/c stuff unfortunately isn’t recognized by the docker for Windows daemon.
Solution
Instead of -v $(pwd):/app, use -v $(echo $(pwd) | sed 's/^\/mnt\/\(.\)/\1:/'):/app
This basically calls $(pwd) to determine the current working directory, and replaces /mnt/x with x:, so Docker works correctly.
Example
A rather convoluted way to ls the current directory would be
docker run --rm --volume=$(echo $(pwd) | sed 's/^\/mnt\/\(.\)/\1:/'):/foo -it alpine:latest ls -als /foo