Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and validate the new file before committing it to the real location Controversial take: i think that it'd be really good to have EVERY configuration file have something like that. For example, if i'm working on a long bit of configuration for fstab, cron, Apache2, Nginx, Tomcat or any other pieces of software, i'd want to see whether everything i've written will be considered valid ahead of time, e.g. a "dry run" o…
Nginx does have a "dry run" mode for checking configs (unless that something external - like unresponsive servers - is experiencing problems).
Thanks for this information, had to actually look it up and check, seems like that's indeed true: https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/start/topics/tutorials/...
Here's an example:
$ docker run --rm nginx:1.20.2 nginx -t -g "daemon off;"
/docker-entrypoint.sh: /docker-entrypoint.d/ is not empty, will attempt to perform configuration
/docker-entrypoint.sh: Looking for shell scripts in /docker-entrypoint.d/
/docker-entrypoint.sh: Launching /docker-entrypoint.d/10-listen-on-ipv6-by-default.sh
10-listen-on-ipv6-by-default.sh: info: Getting the checksum of /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
10-listen-on-ipv6-by-default.sh: info: Enabled listen on IPv6 in /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
/docker-entrypoint.sh: Launching /docker-entrypoint.d/20-envsubst-on-templates.sh
/docker-entrypoint.sh: Launching /docker-entrypoint.d/30-tune-worker-processes.sh
/docker-entrypoint.sh: Configuration complete; ready for start up
nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful