Have nginx access_log and error_log log to STDOUT and STDERR of master process

If the question is docker related... the official nginx docker images do this by making softlinks towards stdout/stderr

RUN ln -sf /dev/stdout /var/log/nginx/access.log && ln -sf /dev/stderr /var/log/nginx/error.log

REF: https://microbadger.com/images/nginx

Syntax: error_log file | stderr | syslog:server=address[,parameter=value] | memory:size [debug | info | notice | warn | error | crit | alert | emerg];
Default:    
error_log logs/error.log error;
Context:    main, http, stream, server, location

http://nginx.org/en/docs/ngx_core_module.html#error_log

Don't use: /dev/stderr This will break your setup if you're going to use systemd-nspawn.

Edit: it seems nginx now supports error_log stderr; as mentioned in Anon's answer.

You can send the logs to /dev/stdout. In nginx.conf:

daemon off;
error_log /dev/stdout info;

http {
  access_log /dev/stdout;
  ...
}

edit: May need to run ln -sf /proc/self/fd /dev/ if using running certain docker containers, then use /dev/fd/1 or /dev/fd/2