How to make a build arg mandatory during Docker build?

Is there any way to make a build argument mandatory during docker build? The expected behaviour would be for the build to fail if the argument is missing.

For example, for the following Dockerfile:

FROM ubuntu

ARG MY_VARIABLE
ENV MY_VARIABLE $MY_VARIABLE

RUN ...

I would like the build to fail at ARG MY_VARIABLE when built with docker build -t my-tag . and pass when built with docker build -t my-tag --build-arg MY_VARIABLE=my_value ..

Is there any way to achieve that behaviour? Setting a default value doesn't really do the trick in my case.

(I'm running Docker 1.11.1 on darwin/amd64.)

EDIT: One way of doing that I can think of is to run a command that fails when MY_VARIABLE is empty, e.g.:

FROM ubuntu

ARG MY_VARIABLE
RUN test -n "$MY_VARIABLE"
ENV MY_VARIABLE $MY_VARIABLE

RUN ...

but it doesn't seem to be a very idiomatic solution to the problem at hand.

I tested with RUN test -n <ARGvariablename> what @konradstrack mentioned in the original (edit) post... that seems do the job of mandating the variable to be passed as the build time argument for the docker build command:

FROM ubuntu

ARG MY_VARIABLE
RUN test -n "$MY_VARIABLE"
ENV MY_VARIABLE $MY_VARIABLE

You can also use shell parameter expansion to achieve this.

Let's say your mandatory build argument is called MANDATORY_BUILD_ARGUMENT, and you want it to be set and non-empty, your Dockerfile could look like this:

    FROM debian:stretch-slim
    MAINTAINER Evel Knievel <[email protected]>
    
    ARG MANDATORY_BUILD_ARGUMENT
    
    RUN \
    # Check for mandatory build arguments
        : "${MANDATORY_BUILD_ARGUMENT:?Build argument needs to be set and non-empty.}" \
    
    # Install libraries
    &&  apt-get update \
    &&  apt-get install -y \
            cowsay \
            fortune \

    # Cleanup
    &&  apt-get clean \
    &&  rm -rf \
            /var/lib/apt/lists/* \
            /var/tmp/* \
            /tmp/* \

    CMD ["/bin/bash", "-c", "/usr/games/fortune | /usr/games/cowsay"]

Of course, you would also want to use the build-argument for something, unlike I did, but still, I recommend building this Dockerfile and taking it for a test-run :)

EDIT

As mentioned in @Jeffrey Wen's answer, to make sure that this errors out on a centos:7 image (and possibly others, I admittedly haven't tested this on other images than stretch-slim):

Ensure that you're executing the RUN command with the bash shell.

RUN ["/bin/bash", "-c", ": ${MYUID:?Build argument needs to be set and not null.}"]