It took me a long time to figure this out, so I wanted to memorialize the solution I found in case it helps anyone else.
I wanted to run an nginx container to test HTML/JavaScript/CSS code. Actually, I was writing
Polymer components and I wanted a build/test workflow different to
that recommended using the supplied polyserve mini-server.
That's just a detail, though. The key requirement is that any time a file is changed, the change must be deployed
by the nginx server.
Out-of-the-box the standard nginx Docker image won't do this.
Let me say right up front that the solution is to configure nginx with sendfile off.
Here's a starting point for further research on [StackOverflow]
(http://serverfault.com/questions/269420/disable-caching-when-serving-static-files-with-nginx-for-development).
Where I got lost is that I have absolutely no idea how to configure ```nginx`` and I don't really want to invest the time to find out.
The key to the solution is that you can run the nginx container passing it two volume mount points:
one for the location of your static files, the other for the nginx configuration.
We will configure nginx by copying the container's configuration and modifying it.
# create a place for nginx to be deployed from on your host filesystem
mkdir ~/nginx
mkdir ~/nginx/html
mkdir ~/nginx/conf
# fire up a temporary nginx container and attach to it
# we will temporarily share the root of this new directory structure
docker run -d -v ~/nginx:/usr/share/nginx/html --name temp nginx
docker exec -it temp bash
# now the command prompt will sat something like:
# root@43c6a72b689a:/#
# next, copy out the nginx conf files from the container back to the host
cp -r /etc/nginx /usr/share/nginx/html/conf
# exit from the temporary container
exit
# remove the temporary container
docker stop temp
docker rm temp
# now you can edit ~/nginx/conf/nginx.conf for sendfile off
# I also added expires 0 to ~/nginx/conf/conf.d/default.conf but not sure if necessary
# location / {
# expires 0;
# root /usr/share/nginx/html;
# index index.html index.htm;
# }
# finally put and maintain whatever files you need in ~/nginx/html
# start a real nginx server with something like this
# note the standard mount points for static files and conf files
docker run -d -P -p 8080:80 -v ~/nginx/html:/usr/share/nginx/html -v ~/nginx/conf:/etc/nginx:ro --name nginx nginx
I like to start my nginx container with a fixed port so the URL for testing is predictable. I use
boot2docker so the IP nginx actually appears to be running is not localhost. Once I've
grabbed that IP I add an nginx entry into my hosts file.
Finally it is trivial to add scripting to your .bash_profile (for example) to start and stop
the nginx container.