Add a volume to Docker, but exclude a sub-folder

Using docker-compose I'm able to use node_modules locally, but ignore it in the docker container using the following syntax in the docker-compose.yml

volumes:   - './angularApp:/opt/app'   - /opt/app/node_modules/

So everything in ./angularApp is mapped to /opt/app and then I create another mount volume /opt/app/node_modules/ which is now empty directory - even if in my local machine ./angularApp/node_modules is not empty.

If you want to have subdirectories ignored by docker-compose but persistent, you can do the following in docker-compose.yml:

volumes:  node_modules:services:  server:    volumes:      - .:/app      - node_modules:/app/node_modules

This will mount your current directory as a shared volume, but mount a persistent docker volume in place of your local node_modules directory. This is similar to the answer by @kernix, but this will allow node_modules to persist between docker-compose up runs, which is likely the desired behavior.

To exclude a file, use the following

volumes:   - /hostFolder:/folder   - /dev/null:/folder/fileToBeExcluded