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Heroku Review Apps Setup

This document describes how to set up Heroku Review Apps for PR preview deployments.

Prerequisites

  • Heroku CLI installed (brew tap heroku/brew && brew install heroku)
  • Access to the Heroku team (kernelbot)
  • Admin access to the GitHub repository

Setup Steps

1. Create a Heroku Pipeline

heroku pipelines:create kernelboard --app kernelboard --stage production --team kernelbot

2. Connect GitHub

  1. Go to the Heroku Dashboard
  2. Navigate to your pipeline
  3. Click "Connect to GitHub" and authorize the repository

3. Enable Review Apps

  1. In the pipeline view, click "Enable Review Apps"
  2. Check "Create new review apps for new pull requests automatically"
  3. Check "Destroy stale review apps automatically" (recommended: after 5 days)
heroku reviewapps:enable --pipeline kernelboard --autodeploy --autodestroy

4. Configure Environment Variables

Review apps auto-provision:

  • DATABASE_URL (from heroku-postgresql add-on)
  • REDIS_URL (from heroku-redis add-on)
  • SECRET_KEY (auto-generated in code)

Discord environment variables are optional for previews. The app will run without them, but Discord login and scheduled events won't work.

If you want full functionality, inherit these from production:

  • DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN
  • DISCORD_GUILD_ID
  • DISCORD_CLIENT_ID
  • DISCORD_CLIENT_SECRET
  • DISCORD_CLUSTER_MANAGER_API_BASE_URL

How It Works

  1. Create a PR against main
  2. Heroku automatically builds and deploys a preview
  3. A comment with a link to the pipeline appears on the PR
  4. The preview updates on every push to the PR
  5. The preview is destroyed when the PR is closed/merged

Troubleshooting

Review app crashes on startup

Check the logs:

heroku logs --tail --app <review-app-name>

Common issues:

  • Missing DATABASE_URL or REDIS_URL - check that add-ons were provisioned
  • The app.json file must be present in the repository root

Review apps not being created

  1. Verify GitHub is connected: Check pipeline settings in Heroku Dashboard
  2. Verify review apps are enabled: heroku reviewapps --pipeline kernelboard
  3. Check that app.json exists in the repository root