Installation/Heroku

Note:

These instructions are tested on Unix based operating systems only. If you're on Windows you better get a virtual machine.

First deploy

We start with building a minimal pod entirely hosted on Heroku. It's good to have an RVM installation locally to leave your local system clean(er).

Fork Diaspora and clone your fork to your local machine. There checkout a custom branch for your pod, we'll name it heroku here.

cd diaspora
git checkout -b heroku origin/master

We need to switch the Gemfile.lock to PostgreSQL. Edit Gemfile and remove if ENV['DB'] == 'all' || ENV['DB'] == 'postgres'. Then run:

bundle --without development test heroku production assets
git add Gemfile Gemfile.lock
git commit -m "switch Gemfile.lock to pg exclusivly"

Install the Heroku toolbelt.

Create an app, you must replace diasporadev here and in all following cases with something unique:

heroku apps:create diasporadev

Enable required the addons:

heroku addons:add redistogo:nano
heroku addons:add heroku-postgresql

And make the database available, replace the REPLACEME with corresponding part of HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_REPLACEME_URL that the last command gave you (or look it up with heroku config):

heroku pg:promote HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_REPLACEME

Set some basic configuration, remember to replace diasporadev:

heroku config:set HEROKU=true DB=postgres  ENVIRONMENT_URL=https://diasporadev.herokuapp.com/ ENVIRONMENT_ASSETS_SERVE=true SERVER_EMBED_SIDEKIQ_WORKER=true  ENVIRONMENT_CERTIFICATE_AUTHORITIES=/usr/lib/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

You can now already go through config/diaspora.yml.example and add the settings you want to differ from the defaults, converting them to environment variables as described at the top of the file.

Set a secure token:

heroku config:add SECRET_TOKEN=$(curl -s "http://www.random.org/cgi-bin/randbyte?nbytes=40&format=h" | tr -d " \n")

Now deploy:

git push -u heroku heroku:master

And load the schema:

heroku run rake db:schema:load

Restart to ensure you're not in the crashed state from the deploy with a unpopulated database:

heroku restart

That should give you a basic pod, to open it in your browser run

heroku open

Custom landing page

Edit .gitignore and remove the following line:

app/views/home/_show.*

Create your landing page as described in Custom Splash Page. Add it to your branch:

git add app/views/home/
git commit -m "custom landing page"

Deploy it:

git push heroku heroku:master

Amazon S3 Image and asset hosting

To enable image hosting, first set your S3 data:

 
heroku config:add ENVIRONMENT_S3_ENABLE=true ENVIRONMENT_S3_KEY=changeme ENVIRONMENT_S3_SECRET=changeme ENVIRONMENT_S3_BUCKET=changeme ENVIRONMENT_IMAGE_REDIRECT_URL=https://changeme.s3.amazonaws.com/

Change your region if it's different from the default:

heroku config:add ENVIRONMENT_S3_REGION=eu-west-1

To enable uploading assets to S3 and serving them from it:

heroku config:add ENVIRONMENT_ASSETS_UPLOAD=true ENVIRONMENT_ASSETS_HOST=https://changeme.s3.amazonaws.com

The assets should be uploaded with the next deploy. If that's not working run the following afterwards:

heroku run 'rails runner "AssetSync.sync"'

Amazon RDS Database hosting

heroku config:set DB=mysql

Grab commit SHA from switch to PostgreSQL and revert it:

git log --grep "switch Gemfile.lock to pg exclusivly" 
git revert <commit-sha from previous command>

Follow https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/amazon_rds

Deploy.