I know you can deploy automatically to heroku from github, but I haven't found a way to only push a subfolder from github to heroku.
From the command-line I know it is possible to do this with:
git subtree push --prefix <subfolder> heroku master
However, I would like to know if there is a way to use the github integration with heroku to make it pull a specific subfolder automatically when a commit is added to a branch.
2018 Update! To enable automated deployments with heroku, you need to have admin access for the github repo you want to deploy.
Inside the Deploy tab, scroll to Deployment method and connect your Github account. find the repo and hit connect. heroku should be authorized as an Oauth app in your github now.
If you cannot find the repo: Either your github has not authorized Heroku or you did not create this repo and need to make sure you have admin access to it. If this is not possible, invite an admin of the repo to your heroku app by going to Access tab in Heroku Dashboard and adding the admin as a collaborator. The admin then logs into heroku and completes Step 1 here. Afterwards you can finish the following steps.
Inside the Settings tab, set a config var to tell Heroku the path to find the server code you want deployed.
Example: lets say your repo name is MyRepo and it has 2 sub-folders. back-end contains a Node.js server and front-end contains a React app. Your github directory looks like this:
MyRepo/front-end/package.json
MyRepo/back-end/package.json
Then you should set your config var to PROJECT_PATH in the left box and back-end in the right box.
Again inside the Settings tab, you need to add a Buildpack that will tell heroku to look for your folder instead of deploying the repo root. There should already be 1 buildpack there to tell heroku what type of server it is (javascript/node.js, python/django, etc...).
Enter this url to add buildpack https://github.com/timanovsky/subdir-heroku-buildpack.git and make sure this is at the top of the buildpack chain (drag the lines on the left to make it above any other buildpacks you have added.
Inside the Deploy tab, scroll to Automatic Deploys and click the black button to enable automatic deploys
The buildpack takes subdirectory you configured, erases everything else, and copies that subdirectory to project root. Then normal Heroku slug compilation proceeds. . isn't it a little risky? it might remove uncommitted frontend changes if we try to deploy a backendI was able to make it work. I have a server subfolder with Python Flask app and I wanted to deploy it automatically using GitHub integration.
Heroku uses buildpacks to detect the language & framework of your project. More about that here.
I found the source code for my buildpack here. Then you just need to look at the detection script. For python it checks the requirements.txt file, so I made a symlink using ln -s server/requirements.txt requirements.txt.
My Procfile looks like this: web: gunicorn --pythonpath server/api app:app.
Everything works now!
What I did in order to have automatic deployments from a subfolder was to create a new branch in GitHub and push JUST the subfolder and then set Heroku to auto-deploy to that branch.
Use git subtree push --prefix <subfolder> origin <branch> to push the subfolder into that branch
git subtree x. Figured it was worth the mention for other wanderers considering it.Test this solution:
In the enviroment variables set
PROJECT_PATH
to
<repo relative path to the subfolder>
Why? I notice that
git subtree push --prefix <subfolder> Heroku master
does this automatically, and there is a high chance that Heroku does this to set the path of the subfolder. With this you can set the repo to auto-deployment and declare the subfolder path. They should really work on making this more obvious.
I think right now there is an issue in this answer from noxasaxon
On step 2) in the PROJECT_PATH you shouldn't put MyRepo/front-end/package.json . but instead in the path variable just front-end and it will work. More info here https://github.com/timanovsky/subdir-heroku-buildpack/issues/5
The easy way to deploy a repo with a server in subdirectory:
Now, you can choose your repo in Heroku/Deploy to deploy and use.
Heroku cli Subfolder Deployment :
In my full-stack project the front and backend are in separated folders, I build the frontend in a public folder inside the backend folder and I needed to deploy the backend folder, to do so:
First, create a subtree for the backend folder to a separate branch (master) in my case.
git subtree split -P almarket/almarket-api -b master
Then push it to heroku using --force annotation
git push --force heroku master
Don't forget to delete the subtree git branch at the beginning of each deployment using.
git branch --delete -D master
Note: Heroku uses only main or git master branches for deployment, so if your root git branch is main use the following commands, but if your root git branch is master replace master with main
Here is the simplest solution:
First, download subdir-heroku-buildpack using Heroku CLI:
heroku buildpacks:add -a *YOUR_APP_NAME* https://github.com/timanovsky/subdir-heroku-buildpack
Second, set a new env variable named PROJECT_PATH with the relative directory
heroku config:set -a *YOUR_APP_NAME* PROJECT_PATH=./sub-directory
In Heroku Settings (UI) - Make the subdir buildpack first
That's it, you are done!
The simplest way by far to deploy a subdirectory is to instead use Netlify -- Log in, then drag your root folder into drag and drop area under "Sites", then under Settings -> Build & Deploy -> Continuous Deployment -> Build settings (connect Netlify to Github repo first) youll enter the subdirectory name into Base Directory field (no slashes), then CI= npm run build for Build Command, and finally yourSubdirectoryName/build for Publish Directory field. Save and then trigger another deployment.
