# Heroku

Easily publish your project using Heroku using the the dedicated buildpack and let Retype do the building for you!

# Step 1: Clone repository

Clone a git repository using the git command line client.

For demonstrations purposes, let's use the Retype website repo, but of course you likely want to use your own project.

git clone https://github.com/retypeapp/retype

Cloning will create a retype directory containing a copy of this website.

# Switch folders

This is important for Heroku to be able to set up the repository remotes in the next step.

cd retype

# Step 2: Create the app

Run the following command to create a new Heroku app instance.

heroku create my-app-name

Remember to replace my-app-name with the app name of your preference. The name of the app is prefixed to the public app address.

With the sample above, that would be https://my-app-name.herokuapp.com/.

If you are not already signed into Heroku, run the heroku login command.

# Step 3: Enable buildpack

Enable the Retype Heroku buildpack using the Heroku CLI.

heroku buildpacks:set https://github.com/retypeapp/heroku-buildpack

The Retype Heroku buildpack will do all the magic. Once the documentation project is pushed to Heroku, the Retype buildpack will start up and handle the documentation build.

# Step 4: Publish

Push the repository to Heroku using the git push command.

git push heroku main

The git push process should only take a few seconds to finish. Once complete, the last lines of output should print out the URL to your app.

With the app name used in this guide, that URL would be https://my-app-name.herokuapp.com/.

Building your documentation project locally is not required, other than for testing. You do not need to commit any built files. The Heroku buildpack will handle all that for you! The project is built remotely.

# Publishing your project

Any Retype project can be deployed to Heroku. Just use your repo in Step 1.

The buildpack only requires a retype.yml file to build the documentation and the file can be provided serveral different ways:

A retype.yml file in the root of your project, or
A retype.yml file anywhere in the repository, or
The full path to a directory containing retype.yml or directly to the file itself. Configure using the Heroku config var RETYPE_CONFIG, or

Please review the Project configuration docs for all possible retype.yml options.

# Further Reading

Install Retype to run locally, see Getting Started
Troubleshoot Heroku push/build issues, see troubleshooting
Check out the open-source Retype Heroku buildpack
To create a Heroku account, see heroku.com
Download the Heroku CLI
Heroku CLI documentation