Re: Improving how NGINX modules are used and built

["Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>]

Hi,

Bruno Victal <mirai@makinata.eu> skribis:

> On 2023-01-09 10:51, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>> Hello!
>> 
>> mirai <mirai@makinata.eu> skribis:
>> 
>>> An oddity of how nginx modules are packaged in guix is that they all place
>>> the .so file under /etc/nginx/modules which is an odd directory to place library object files.
>> 
>> To me that should be treated as a bug.  Those .so files should go to
>> $PKG/lib/nginx instead, or something similar.
>
> Fixing this bug is likely to cause pain to existing module users, as the path to these .so
> files is explicitly passed to <nginx-configuration> and is what's documented in the Guix manual.

Right.  We could imagine a transition period during which nginx module
packages make their .so available under $PKG/lib/nginx primarily, but
keep $PKG/etc as a symlink to that.

[...]

>>> And nginx-configuration should serialize the modules field as a series of lines including
>>> the module .conf files, that is:
>>>
>>> include "/gnu/store/......nginx-foo-module/etc/nginx/modules/ngx_foo_module.conf";
>>> include "/gnu/store/......nginx-bar-module/etc/nginx/modules/ngx_bar_module.conf";
>>> ...
>>>
>>> (note: a directory union could be used here as an alternative)
>> 
>> I’d say that ideally, one could extend <nginx-configuration> with
>> modules, and that would automatically create the ‘load_module’
>> statements.

[...]

> I'm not convinced that <nginx-configuration> should be generating load_module statements here,
> these should be generated by the module-package itself into a .conf file and <nginx-configuration>
> generates a include statement for it. Reason being that nothing stops a module being comprised
> of several .so files or be a "pseudo-module", that is, it's a .conf snippet to be included.

Yes, that sounds even better.  From the admin’s viewpoint, it’s kind of
the same anyway: you list a bunch of packages to use as nginx modules,
and it “just works”, with the appropriate ‘load_module’ ending up
directly or indirectly in the nginx config file.

Thanks,
Ludo’.