Heroku buildpack: Node.js

This is a custom Heroku buildpack for Node.js applications that run on the Cedar runtime stack on Heroku. It uses NPM and SCons.

Quick start

Example usage:

$ ls
Procfile  package.json  web.js

$ heroku create --stack cedar --buildpack http://github.com/liquid/heroku-buildpack-nodejs.git

$ git push heroku master
...
-----> Heroku receiving push
-----> Fetching custom buildpack
-----> Node.js app detected
-----> Vendoring node 0.6.13
-----> Installing dependencies with npm 1.1.0-2
       express@2.1.0 ./node_modules/express
       ├── mime@1.2.2
       ├── qs@0.3.1
       └── connect@1.6.2
       Dependencies installed

The buildpack will detect your app as Node.js if it has the file package.json in the root. It will use NPM to install your dependencies, and vendors a version of the Node.js runtime into your slug. The node_modules directory will be cached between builds to allow for faster NPM install time.

Customization

You can create your own buildpack in order to use different versions of Node.js and/or NPM. To change the vendored binaries for Node.js, NPM, and SCons, use the helper scripts in the support/ subdirectory.

You are going to need the following:

• An S3 enabled AWS account to store your binaries in.
• Your application must use NPM to manage dependencies. (See package.json on the Heroku Dev Center).
• Obviously a Heroku user account. Signup is free and instant.

Workflow:

• Fork this buildpack on Github and clone it to somewhere in order to make changes to it

• Set the nexessary environment variables in your shell:

    $ export AWS_ID="YOUR-AWS-ID" AWS_SECRET="YOUR-AWS-SECRET" S3_BUCKET="YOUR-S3BUCKET-NAME"
  

• Create your S3 bucket (in case it doesn't exist yet):

    $ s3 create $S3_BUCKET
  

• Customise your version of Node that you want to use by running ./support/package_node with the desired version of Node. The script will compile Node and push the binaries ready onto your S3 bucket:

    $ ./support/package_node 0.6.13
  

• Open bin/compile in your editor, and change the following lines:

    NODE_VERSION="0.6.13"
    S3_BUCKET=zzz
  

• Commit and push the changes to your buildpack to your Github fork

• Create a test application that makes use of your custom buildpack and push to it:

    $ heroku create --buildpack <your-github-url>
  

• You should see:

    -----> Vendoring node 0.6.13
    -----> Installing dependencies with npm 1.1.0-2