Heroku buildpack: Coffeescript

This is a Heroku buildpack for Coffeescript apps. It uses NPM and SCons. It is based on the Heroku Node.js buildpack.

Usage

Example usage:

$ ls
Procfile  package.json  src

$ ls src
app.coffee

$ heroku create --stack cedar --buildpack https://github.com/aergonaut/heroku-buildpack-coffeescript.git

$ git push heroku master
...
-----> Heroku receiving push
-----> Fetching custom git buildpack... done
-----> Coffeescript app detected
-----> Resolving engine versions
       Using Node.js version: 0.8.12
       Using npm version: 1.1.49
-----> Fetching Node.js binaries
-----> Vendoring node into slug
-----> Installing dependencies with npm
       coffee-script@1.4.0 node_modules/coffee-script

       express@3.0.0 node_modules/express
       ├── methods@0.0.1
       ├── fresh@0.1.0
       ├── range-parser@0.0.4
       ├── cookie@0.0.4
       ├── crc@0.2.0
       ├── commander@0.6.1
       ├── debug@0.7.0
       ├── mkdirp@0.3.3
       ├── send@0.1.0 (mime@1.2.6)
       └── connect@2.6.0 (pause@0.0.1, bytes@0.1.0, qs@0.5.1, formidable@1.0.11, send@0.0.4)
       Dependencies installed
-----> Compiling coffee source
       Source compiled to target
-----> Building runtime environment
...

The buildpack will detect your app as Coffeescript if it detects a file matching src/*.coffee in your project 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.

You must include Coffeescript in your package.json. The buildpack does not install Coffeescript automatically in order to allow you to specify your own Coffeescript version.

Compiled javascript is written to the target directory in the slug. Your Procfile should reference these compiled files like so:

web: node target/app.js

Node.js and npm versions

You can specify the versions of Node.js and npm your application requires using package.json

{
  "name": "myapp",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "engines": {
    "node": ">=0.4.7 <0.7.0",
    "npm": ">=1.0.0"
  }
}

To list the available versions of Node.js and npm, see these manifests:

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

Hacking

To use this buildpack, fork it on Github. Push up changes to your fork, then create a test app with --buildpack <your-github-url> and push to it.

To change the vendored binaries for Node.js, NPM, and SCons, use the helper scripts in the support/ subdirectory. You'll need an S3-enabled AWS account and a bucket to store your binaries in.

For example, you can change the default version of Node.js to v0.6.7.

First you'll need to build a Heroku-compatible version of Node.js:

$ export AWS_ID=xxx AWS_SECRET=yyy S3_BUCKET=zzz
$ s3 create $S3_BUCKET
$ support/package_nodejs 0.6.7

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

DEFAULT_NODE_VERSION="0.6.7"
S3_BUCKET=zzz

Commit and push the changes to your buildpack to your Github fork, then push your sample app to Heroku to test. You should see:

-----> Vendoring node 0.6.7