Comments on: Running Your Own Node.js Version on Heroku

By: picking a server-side language | Robert Pate, II

picking a server-side language | Robert Pate, II — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 21:17:48 +0000

[...] too. but runs version 4.7 by default. upping it to 6.2 could be a pain, judging from this post by Pat Patterson. I have zero experience with node, but I’m very interested in it. it will have far fewer [...]

By: Pat Patterson

Pat Patterson — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:07:29 +0000

Nice one, Gregor!

By: Gregor Melhorn

Gregor Melhorn — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 21:54:08 +0000

You can save a lot of time by just looking if the heroku team already prepared your node version:

http://heroku-buildpack-nodejs.s3.amazonaws.com/manifest.npm
http://heroku-buildpack-nodejs.s3.amazonaws.com/manifest.nodejs

will show you the available versions in the official heroku repository. Now just clone the heroku buildpack repo, edit bin/compile and change the version numbers of node and npm accordingly. Commit and push and use this repo as your buildpack.

I was unable to compile it myself but am still able to use node 0.6.8 with this approach.

By: Pat Patterson

Pat Patterson — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 16:56:20 +0000

Hi Paul – Yes, I’ll create a new buildpack from time to time, but I don’t really have the bandwidth to keep up with the Node.js release train – as you say, it updates quite fast! The recipe is here for anyone to create their own, though.

As for keeping an app running the newest nodejs version… You don’t need to create a new cedar. Just set the BUILDPACK_URL config var to a different git URL with heroku config:add and redeploy the app. I don’t think this is something you would want to do automatically, though, since Node can change significantly between versions…

By: Paul

Paul — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 03:36:24 +0000

Would you think of making more updated unofficial nodejs versions, because it updates quite fast and it would be really helpful and time saving.

btw Do you know if there is any way to keep an app that is running the newest nodejs version? Instead of creating a new cedar everytime.

By: Pat Patterson

Pat Patterson — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:03:03 +0000

Hey Matt – David Dollar, the Vulcan maintainer got back to me – the issue should be fixed in the latest Vulcan gem. Update and let me know how it goes.

By: Pat Patterson

Pat Patterson — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 01:01:51 +0000

Hi Matt – apologies for the delay in replying – I was away for the holidays. I’ll ping one of the Heroku gurus on this, see what I can turn up.

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 06:48:15 +0000

Hi Pat,

Thanks for the post. I’m running into trouble with the support/package_node 0.6.1 step in your instructions. I’m using a direct clone of your repo and getting what appears to be an error in the ‘vulcan build’ portion of the script. It’s error-ing out with the following: https://gist.github.com/1543157.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

By: Pat Patterson

Pat Patterson — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:02:50 +0000

Hi mmstud - the most likely problem is that your Heroku client needs an update - what does heroku version tell you? You need version 2.11.0 or later. In most cases, gem update heroku will update the Heroku gem to the latest version; if that doesn't work, then try heroku update.

By: mmstud

mmstud — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 23:23:51 +0000

I do:

heroku create –stack cedar –buildpack http://github.com/metadaddy-sfdc/heroku-buildpack-nodejs.git
Creating afternoon-lightning-2887… done, stack is cedar
http://afternoon-lightning-2887.herokuapp.com/ | git@heroku.com:afternoon-lightning-2887.git

AND

git push heroku master
Counting objects: 5, done.
Delta compression using up to 2 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 285 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 2), reused 0 (delta 0)

—–> Heroku receiving push
—–> Node.js app detected
—–> Fetching Node.js binaries
—–> Vendoring node 0.4.7
—–> Installing dependencies with npm 1.0.94

Dependencies installed
—–> Discovering process types
Procfile declares types -> app
—–> Compiled slug size is 11.7MB
—–> Launching… done, v271
http://xxx deployed to Heroku

To git@heroku.com xx
298a809..837363d master -> master

So versions are not updating, any ideas?