What's the purpose of ppa:ondrej/nginx?

Question

I've juste add ppa:ondrej/php on my ubuntu server, and it prompt me the message below.

Why am I advised to add ppa:ondrej/nginx (stable) too? What's the exact purpose of this?

For information I have already installed Nginx from the official doc.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
Note: PPA publishes dbgsym
  You need to add 'main/debug' component to install the ddebs,
  but apt update will print warning if the PPA has no ddebs
Repository: 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ondrej/php/ubuntu/ groovy main'
Description:
Co-installable PHP versions: PHP 5.6, PHP 7.x and most requested extensions are included. Only Supported Versions of PHP (http://php.net/supported-versions.php) for Supported Ubuntu Releases (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases) are provided. Don't ask for end-of-life PHP versions or Ubuntu release, they won't be provided.

Debian oldstable and stable packages are provided as well: https://deb.sury.org/#debian-dpa

You can get more information about the packages at https://deb.sury.org

IMPORTANT: The <foo>-backports is now required on older Ubuntu releases.

BUGS&FEATURES: This PPA now has a issue tracker:
https://deb.sury.org/#bug-reporting

CAVEATS:
1. If you are using php-gearman, you need to add ppa:ondrej/pkg-gearman
2. If you are using apache2, you are advised to add ppa:ondrej/apache2
3. If you are using nginx, you are advised to add ppa:ondrej/nginx-mainline
   or ppa:ondrej/nginx

PLEASE READ: If you like my work and want to give me a little motivation, please consider donating regularly: https://donate.sury.org/

WARNING: add-apt-repository is broken with non-UTF-8 locales, see
https://github.com/oerdnj/deb.sury.org/issues/56 for workaround:

# LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
More info: https://launchpad.net/~ondrej/+archive/ubuntu/php
Adding repository.
Press [ENTER] to continue or Ctrl-c to cancel.

---

I don't know very well the Personal Package Archives (PPA), so I would appreciate some help about how it works.

Ham

Presumably, for the same reason as the PHP packages: to get more up to date versions that available in the main package sources. – Motel

What exactly is your question about this? You are not advised to add any other repositories, unless you are using nginx. And if your question is "Why does Ondřej Surý nudge me to do this", you should ask him about this – Rosannrosanna

@NicoHaase I don't know if the warning about ppa:ondrej/nging during the install was to add something to the running Nginx, or if the ppa:ondrej/php check if Nginx is installed or not. – Ham

What do you mean by "warning"? I cannot find any warning in the given message, just a kind advice. And you should ask Ondřej if you want to know why he put that in there – Rosannrosanna

Yeah, "caveats" if you prefer, I read that as a warning. I understood that I must contact the repo owner. – Ham

Answer 1

According to the homepage for ppa:ondrej/nginx, here the PPA description:

This branch follows latest NGINX Stable packages compiled against latest OpenSSL for HTTP/2 and TLS 1.3 support.

BUGS&FEATURES: This PPA now has a issue tracker: https://deb.sury.org/#bug-reporting

PLEASE READ: If you like my work and want to give me a little motivation, please consider donating: https://donate.sury.org

So yes, same purpose as ppa:ondrej/php but to install up to date Nginx (stable) versions.

Ham

Answer 2

Also, ppa:ondrej/nginx includes brotli nginx module, which is not included into the official Ubuntu nginx packages, making this ppa very useful nowadays as brotli is supported by majority of browsers and offers better compression than gzip.

Additionally, it's the latest stable version (for instance, the official Ubuntu:focal repository has nginx 1.18, but ppa:ondrej/nginx has nginx 1.20).

Lore