Brotli on Nginx

Brotli compression was introduced by Google, exactly 3 years ago. It is yet to come by default with the standard Nginx packages of OS vendors or the official Nginx repo. Google maintains its own repo for brotli support on Nginx web server. However, it’s been two years since we had the last commit. Fortunately, a Googler, named Eugene Kliuchnikov, continues to develop a fork of Google’s repo. There are even plan to merge both repos. Still, there isn’t an easy way to compile Nginx from source.

While searching the internet for any existing solutions, I found a couple of excellent solutions.

• https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/how-to-install-nginx-with-brotli-compression-on-ubuntu-1804/
• https://www.babak.io/blog/how-to-build-nginx-with-brotli-support-ubuntu-1604-xenial-xerus

Both provide step by step guidelines on how to compile Nginx from source, along with brotli compression support. Since, I like to automate things, I put together all the steps mentioned by the above articles and created a single script that does the following…

• Compiles Nginx from source with brotli support
• Removes any existing installation of Nginx
• Installs the new Nginx version (with brotli support, of course)
• Starts or restarts Nginx

Here’s the complete code…

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# use it while developing / testing.
# you may use it in production as well.
# set -o errexit -o pipefail -o noclobber -o nounset
# set -x

# compile Nginx from the official repo with brotli compression

[ ! -d /root/log ] && mkdir /root/log

# logging everything
log_file=/root/log/brotli.log
exec > >(tee -a ${log_file} )
exec 2> >(tee -a ${log_file} >&2)

# Defining return code check function
check_result() {
    if [ $1 -ne 0 ]; then
        echo "Error: $2"
        exit $1
    fi
}

export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive

printf '%-72s' "Updating apt repos..."
apt-get -qq update
echo done.

printf '%-72s' "Installing pre-requisites..."
apt-get -qq install dpkg-dev build-essential zlib1g-dev libpcre3 libpcre3-dev unzip
echo done.

codename=$(lsb_release -c -s)

# function to add the official Nginx.org repo
nginx_repo_add() {
    distro=$(gawk -F= '/^ID=/{print $2}' /etc/os-release)
    codename=$(lsb_release -c -s)
    if [ "$codename" == "juno" ] ; then
        codename=bionic
    fi

    if [ "$distro" == "elementary" ] ; then
        distro=ubuntu
    fi

    [ -f nginx_signing.key ] && rm nginx_signing.key
    curl -LSsO http://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key
    check_result $? 'Nginx key could not be downloaded!'
    apt-key add nginx_signing.key &> /dev/null
    check_result $? 'Nginx key could not be added!'
    rm nginx_signing.key

    # for updated info, please see https://nginx.org/en/linux_packages.html#stable
    nginx_branch= # leave this empty to install stable version
    # or nginx_branch="mainline"

    if [ "$nginx_branch" == 'mainline' ]; then
        nginx_src_url="https://nginx.org/packages/mainline/${distro}/"
    else
        nginx_src_url="https://nginx.org/packages/${distro}/"
    fi

    [ -f /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nginx.list ] && rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nginx.list
    echo "deb ${nginx_src_url} ${codename} nginx" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nginx.list
    echo "deb-src ${nginx_src_url} ${codename} nginx" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nginx.list

    # finally update the local apt cache
    apt-get update -qq
    check_result $? 'Something went wrong while updating apt repos.'
}

case "$codename" in
    "stretch")
        nginx_repo_add
        ;;
    "xenial")
        nginx_repo_add
        ;;
    "bionic")
        nginx_repo_add
        ;;
    "juno")
        codename=bionic
        nginx_repo_add
        ;;
    *)
        echo "Distro: $codename"
        echo 'Warning: Could not figure out the distribution codename. Continuing to install Nginx from the OS.'
        ;;
esac

cd /usr/local/src
apt-get source nginx
apt-get build-dep nginx -y

git clone --recursive https://github.com/eustas/ngx_brotli

cd /usr/local/src/nginx-*/
# modify the existing config
grep -wq '--add-module=/usr/local/src/ngx_brotli' debian/rules || sed -i -e '/\.\/configure/ s:$: --add-module=/usr/local/src/ngx_brotli:' debian/rules

# build the updated pacakge
dpkg-buildpackage -b

# optional
# install the updated package in the current server
cd /usr/local/src
dpkg -i nginx*.deb

# take a backup
[ ! -d ~/backups/ ] && mkdir ~/backups
mv nginx*.deb ~/backups/

# remove all the sources and apt sources file
cd ~/
rm -rf /usr/local/src/nginx*
rm -rf /usr/local/src/ngx_brotli
rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nginx.list
apt-get -qq update

# hold the package nginx from updating accidentally in the future by someone else!
apt-mark hold nginx

# stop the previously running instance, if any
nginx -t && systemctl stop nginx

# start the new Nginx instance
nginx -t && systemctl start nginx

This has been made as a Github repo for Nginx Brotli compression. Please check it out for updates and support.

Please remember that Brotli is a new standard (even though, it is 3 years old). It works best if assets are compressed already. Nginx takes time to compress on the fly, especially using brotli. If you still wish to use it dynamically, you may want to check it Akamai’s in-depth research on how brotli fairs with gzip in terms of size and speed. Nevertheless, brotli does make a site a bit leaner, thus faster!