setfattr causes error (in Gitlab CI pipeline)

I'm using abuild in a script to build nginx with the geoip2 module in Docker, following these instructions. I'm using the Alpine version.

This all works fine locally, but when building the same Dockerfile in a Gitlab CI setup, it breaks.

I've narrowed it down to this step:

>>> nginx-module-geoip2-dbg: Running split function dbg...
setfattr: ngx_http_geoip2_module-debug.so: Not supported
>>> ERROR: nginx-module-geoip2-dbg: dbg failed
>>> ERROR: nginx-module-geoip2: prepare_subpackages failed
>>> ERROR: nginx-module-geoip2: rootpkg failed

Seems abuild uses setfattr, which apparently isn't supported in every environment.

Thresheek of Nginx helped me to provide a fix by disabling the functions where setfattr are called, but this also leads to bigger builds.

It might be good to either not call setfattr if it isn't available (I don't know if this has any implications) or provide an option to skip it.

Any other ideas?