Web Application Buildpack

This is a Heroku buildpack for your grunt based web application located in a client directory of your project. It installs npm and bower dependencies, runs grunt and supports compass.

The buildpack runs if it finds a client directory containing a gruntfile (grunt.js, Gruntfile.js or Gruntfile.coffee). Your gruntfile must provide a build task and build the client into a client/dist folder.

Your server buildpack can then collect and serve the assets from client/dist. Everything except client/dist will be removed after build to reduce the slug size.

How to use

You can configure your client directory and dist subdirectory with a .client file:

$ cat .client
CLIENT_DIR=myclient
DIST_DIR=mydist

This is not a standalone buildpack. It builds the client part of your web application and should be used together with other buildpacks like heroku-buildpack-ruby or heroku-buildpack-python. Use heroku-buildpack-multi to run multiple buildpacks:

$ heroku config:add BUILDPACK_URL=https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-multi.git

From here you will need to create a .buildpacks file which contains the buildpacks you wish to run when you deploy:

$ cat .buildpacks
https://github.com/djng/heroku-buildpack-webapp-client.git
<YOUR BUILDPACK> [i.e. https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-ruby.git, https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-python.git, ...]

How it Works

Here's an overview of what this buildpack does:

• Almost everything^[1] that heroku-buildpack-nodejs does (mainly installs node and npm and runs npm install).
• Installs grunt and compass.
• Installs bower if client/bower.json is available and runs bower install
• Runs grunt build.
• Removes everything except the client/dist folder.

For more technical details, see the heavily-commented compile script.

^[1] The following changes are made compared to heroku-buildpack-nodejs:

• Does not automatically creates a Procfile.
• Ignores NODE_ENV and install devDependencies.
• Installs the 'next' version of npm.

Testing

Anvil is a generic build server for Heroku.

gem install anvil-cli

The heroku-anvil CLI plugin is a wrapper for anvil.

heroku plugins:install https://github.com/ddollar/heroku-anvil

The ddollar/test buildpack runs bin/test on your app/buildpack.

heroku build -b ddollar/test # -b can also point to a local directory

For more info on testing, see Best Practices for Testing Buildpacks on the Heroku discussion forum.

Contribute

If you'd like to contribute, simply fork the repository, commit your changes to the master branch (or branch off of it), and send a pull request.