How to fix Google Cloud Build ignoring .dockerignore

Problem:

You want to run a docker image build on Google Cloud Build, but the client is trying to upload a huge context image to Google Cloud even though you have added all your large directories to your .dockerignore and the build works fine locally.

Solution:

Google Cloud Build ignores .dockerignore by design - the equivalent is called .gcloudignore.

You can copy the .dockerignore behaviour for gcloud by running

cp .dockerignore .gcloudignore