a bit of background,

• I’m working on a project that has its own js build pipeline, and the build output already includes a digest hash in their names. Running mix phx.digest would append another layer of digest to the file names. I wanted to include script tags without this second digest.
• When the app is running under prod env/build, generating static paths with Routes.static_path(conn, "app.build_digest_ad21d.js") produces outputs like app.build_digest_ad21d.phx_digest_sd212.js.
• I was able to disable this behavior by removing the cache_static_manifest from the endpoint config, and get the static paths I want without the extra digest.

so, my questions here are, what does cache_static_manifest do exactly and how does it affect the static server? The name seems to suggest it has something to do with caching? Does it control how the static server cache the files in memory or something?

Running mix phx.digest seems to also generate the gzipped version of the static files. Would disabling this manifest means the static server have to compress all the static files on the fly everytime?

If anyone can point me to someplace that documents this behavior, that would be very helpful as well. I could only find the mention on Phoenix.Endpoint that says it points to the json manifest file, but there is no mention on how this json manifest file itself gets used or how it affects the Plug.Static..