Dependency Hell

Avoiding building from source when you can

To test if anything would work in the first place I had to write and test basic NGINX modules in C. This required installing NGINX from a source on my Linux machine. Anyone who's installed anything from source understands how time-consuming chasing up outdated dependencies can be.

The big issue even if you do manage to get everything working on your machine after a while, how can you guarantee it will work for another developer? Hence it's crucial for this barrier to be low if this project is to thrive in the open source community.

But it works on my machine!

An easy way to guarantee it'll work on any other computer is my containerising. Developers won't be forced to use a virtualisation tool like Docker but having a clear Dockerfile in the code base will at least provide guidance on how to setup the system correctly.

The following Dockerfile builds NGINX from the source and configures the environment for NGINX module development.

FROM debian:stable
# FROM debian:slim-bullseye to save some bytes

# Update the package repository and install the necessary dependencies
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
    build-essential \
    wget \
    git \
    curl \
    zlib1g-dev \
    libpcre3-dev \
    libpcre2-dev \
    libssl-dev \
    llvm-dev \
    libclang-dev \
    clang \
    automake \
    autoconf \
    libtool \
    vim

# Download Nginx source code
WORKDIR /nginx

ENV NGINX_VER=1.14.2
RUN git config --global http.sslVerify false
RUN wget --no-check-certificate https://nginx.org/download/nginx-${NGINX_VER}.tar.gz
RUN tar -xzvf nginx-${NGINX_VER}.tar.gz
RUN rm nginx-${NGINX_VER}.tar.gz

# Configure and compile Nginx with dynamic module support
WORKDIR /nginx/nginx-${NGINX_VER}
RUN ./configure --with-compat
RUN make
RUN make install
RUN cp objs/nginx /usr/sbin/nginx

# default dynamic modules directory
RUN mkdir /usr/local/nginx/modules

EXPOSE 80

# Start Nginx
# Define the ENTRYPOINT as the NGINX executable
ENTRYPOINT ["nginx", "-g", "daemon off;"]