docker build with --build-arg with multiple arguments

Use --build-arg with each argument.

If you are passing two argument then add --build-arg with each argument like:

docker build \
-t essearch/ess-elasticsearch:1.7.6 \
--build-arg number_of_shards=5 \
--build-arg number_of_replicas=2 \
--no-cache .

The above answer by pl_rock is correct, the only thing I would add is to expect the ARG inside the Dockerfile if not you won't have access to it. So if you are doing

docker build -t essearch/ess-elasticsearch:1.7.6 --build-arg number_of_shards=5 --build-arg number_of_replicas=2 --no-cache .

Then inside the Dockerfile you should add

ARG number_of_replicas
ARG number_of_shards

I was running into this problem, so I hope I help someone (myself) in the future.

If you want to use environment variable during build. Lets say setting username and password.

username= Ubuntu
password= swed24sw

Dockerfile

FROM ubuntu:16.04
ARG SMB_PASS
ARG SMB_USER
# Creates a new User
RUN useradd -ms /bin/bash $SMB_USER
# Enters the password twice.
RUN echo "$SMB_PASS\n$SMB_PASS" | smbpasswd -a $SMB_USER

Terminal Command

docker build --build-arg SMB_PASS=swed24sw --build-arg SMB_USER=Ubuntu . -t IMAGE_TAG

It's a shame that we need multiple ARG too, it results in multiple layers and slows down the build because of that, and for anyone also wondering that, currently there is no way to set multiple ARGs per one line.

In case you want to pass automatically build arguments from a specific file, you can do it this way :

docker build  $(cat .my-env-file-name | while read line; do out+="--build-arg $line"; done; echo $out; out="") .

A way to pass in build arguments from a file using xargs is as follows:

cat .MY_ENV_FILE | xargs printf -- '--build-arg %s\n' | xargs docker build -t MY_TAG .