Question

I try to create a simple heroku app which clones a git repository, invokes bundle install, a rake dist task and then uploads the created files to a GitHub repository. The build task of the cloned repository uses Rake Pipeline, which uses the execjs gem for building the binary.

I’ve created a sample app located at https://github.com/pangratz/github-uploader-test, which illustrates the problem. The directory structure of the application is the following:

/upload.rb
/project
   Rakefile
   Assetfile
   Gemfile
   Gemfile.lock

The app itself is a simple sinatra app with a get '/' route, which looks like this:

upload.rb

get '/' do
  Dir.chdir "project" do
    Bundler.with_clean_env do
      system "bundle install"
      system "bundle exec rake dist"
    end
  end
end

For demonstration purpose, the project folder simulates the cloned git repository. It contains a Rakefile, Assetfile, Gemfile and Gemfile.lock.

project/Rakefile

desc "Build"
task :dist do
  Rake::Pipeline::Project.new("Assetfile").invoke
end

project/Assetfile

require "rake-pipeline-web-filters"
require "json"
require "uglifier"
require "execjs"

puts ExecJS.eval "'red yellow blue'.split(' ')"

project/Gemfile

source "http://rubygems.org"

gem "rake-pipeline", :git => "https://github.com/livingsocial/rake-pipeline.git"
gem "rake-pipeline-web-filters", :git => "https://github.com/wycats/rake-pipeline-web-filters.git"
gem "colored"
gem "uglifier", :git => "https://github.com/lautis/uglifier.git"

group :development do
  gem "rack"
  gem "rest-client"
  gem "github_api"
  gem "ember-docs", :git => "https://github.com/emberjs/docs-generator.git"
  gem "kicker"
end

The invocation of bundle install seems to work. The problem is that rake dist is failing with the error Could not find a JavaScript runtime. See https://github.com/sstephenson/execjs for a list of available runtimes..

The heroku app itself is created with the option --stack cedar.

I’ve also created a route ‘/test’ which uses Execjs and this does not fail. So it seems
that there is a problem with the Bundler.with_clean_env and not finding the installed JavaScript Runtime …

upload.rb

get '/test' do
  puts ExecJS.eval "'red yellow blue'.split(' ')"
end

Answer 1

I’ve opened an issue on Heroku and I could solve the issue. The problem was that the Dir.chdir("project") in combination with the Bundler.with_clean_env resulted in an invalid PATH which is needed to locate the JavaScript Runtime. Long story short, here is the working solution:

get '/' do
  Dir.chdir "project" do
    Bundler.with_clean_env do
      ENV["PATH"] = "/app/bin:#{ENV['PATH']}"
      system "bundle install --without WATWAT"
      system "bundle exec rake dist"
    end
  end
end

A note on the solution: the --without WATWAT is needed because Heroku installs your app with bundle install --without development. Since the --without is remembered for successive calls, and the gems of development group are needed in the Assetfile, this option has to be overwritten. Using --without '' somehow doesn’t work so I’m using the nonexistent group WATWAT to include all groups in the Gemfile.