Copying files to a container with Docker Compose

Given

    volumes:
      - /dir/on/host:/var/www/html

if /dir/on/host doesn’t exist, it is created on the host and the empty content is mounted in the container at /var/www/html. Whatever content you had before in /var/www/html inside the container is inaccessible, until you unmount the volume; the new mount is hiding the old content.