When to use --with-compat configure option?

[Maxim Dounin]

Hello!

On Wed, Oct 12, 2016 at 03:58:25PM +0200, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:

> nginx-1.11.5 introduced a new configure option "--with-compat" however
> I don't find any documentation regarding this option.
> 
> Could you please give us some insight when you expect that this option
> should be used (especially from distribution view, i.e. package
> maintainer)?

The only documentation currently available is:

$ ./configure --help | grep compat
  --with-compat                      dynamic modules compatibility

Expanding the above, this option enables dynamic modules 
compatibility, that is, it ensures that appropriate fields in 
structures are present (or appropriately-sized placeholders are 
added).

This makes it possible to compile additional dynamic modules with 
minimal efforts assuming main nginx binary is compiled 
--with-compat.  Just

$ ./configure --with-compat --add-dynamic-module=/path/to/module

should be enough to compile a binary compatible module (assuming 
the same platform is used for compilation).

>From package maintaining point of view it should be a good idea to 
add the option to nginx builds.  This will allow others to easily 
compile dynamic modules to be loaded into nginx shipped in the 
package.

-- 
Maxim Dounin
http://nginx.org/