Heroku Meteor npm example

This repo contains a working example of a meteor application deployable to Heroku with npm dependencies (compiled).

This is accomplished by leveraging an existing buildpack by Jordan Sissel, and the Node.js buildpack. I've forked the Node.js buildpack and then manually merged Jordan's compile script into it. This was necessary since we're treating our Meteor project as an npm package (via package.json). This is considered best practice with Heroku.

Also, a specially tailored package.json is used to install our dependencies. In this example, I used bcrypt because its build process is unlike most other node modules -- this one has to be compiled:

package.json

{
	"name": "heroku-meteor-npm",
	"version": "0.0.1",
	"engines": {
		"node": "0.6.x"
	},
	"dependencies": {
		"bcrypt": "0.5.0"
	},
	"scripts": {
		"install": "mv node_modules public/node_modules"
	}
}

The name and version properties are specific to your application. This is a regular package.json file, so all typical configuration options available are possible.

The engines.node property is required for this particular example due to bcrypt requirements (it needs 0.6 or greater).

The scripts.install is used to move installed node modules into the strange location that Meteor prefers: public/.

Local installation

git clone [email protected]:matb33/heroku-meteor-npm.git
cd heroku-meteor-npm
npm install
meteor

Heroku installation

Assuming you've installed locally already:

heroku create myappname --stack cedar --buildpack https://github.com/matb33/heroku-buildpack-nodejs.git

I've had issues using --buildpack in that I get a ! Resource not found error. My solution is to split the creation into two commands:

heroku create myappname --stack cedar
heroku config:add BUILDPACK_URL=https://github.com/matb33/heroku-buildpack-nodejs.git

Then, push to heroku, launch the web process, and check it out:

git push heroku master
heroku ps:scale web=1
heroku open

Enjoy!