What is the purpose of the COPY instruction vs the ADD instruction in a Dockerfile?

Question

Docker Fundamentals — Medium

What is the purpose of the COPY instruction vs the ADD instruction in a Dockerfile?

Accepted Answer

The purpose of the COPY instruction in a Dockerfile is to copy files or directories from the build context into the image. On the other hand, the ADD instruction performs the same function but also supports extracting local tar archives and fetching from remote URLs. However, COPY is preferred for transparency in the Dockerfile.