Heroku Deployment

Let’s examine the required files needed to deploy a project to Heroku using Gulp, Git, and Node.

Heroku Terminology

Before we begin, we’ll make sure a few bits of terminology are defined.

Dyno

A lightweight Linux container that runs a single user-specified command. A dyno can run any command available in its default environment. Read more about Dyno types here.

Buildpacks

These lie behind the slug compilation process. They’re open source, enabling you to extend Heroku to other languages and frameworks. Buildpacks take your application, its dependencies, and the language runtime, and produce slugs.

Slug

A bundle of your source, fetched dependencies, the language runtime, and compiled/generated output of the build system – ready for execution.

In order to run a Node-based project on Heroku, we need a few things to get started. The first thing we need is a project. For our purposes, we’ll use the Transformicons Open Source project as the example for this tutorial. You can also use the Transformicons repo with your own free Heroku account to practice outside this article!

Make a Procfile

Begin by making a blank file named Procfile and placing it within the root of your project. Procfile is short for “Process File” and used to explicitly declare what command should be executed to start your app. By default, a Procfile is not required, but it’s good form for Node-based projects to create one…Read the full article on SitePoint