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How to deploy Redmine to Heroku

This post describes how to deploy the free bug tracker Redmine 2 to free hosting on Heroku.

Andrei Kaleshka
Andrei Kaleshka · 4 min read

This post describes how to deploy an absolutely free bug tracker — Redmine — to free hosting on Heroku. That way, you will have a free bug tracker on the internet. There are many posts on the internet that describe how to deploy older versions of Redmine to Heroku, but I couldn’t find any information on how to deploy the new version: Redmine 2. So if you have the same problem, you are welcome!

Changes for Heroku

NOTE: This manual applies only to Redmine version 2.2.2. There are a lot of changes in the next release, which I think will be 2.2.3.

So let’s go! Firstly, we need to clone the source from github:

wget https://github.com/edavis10/redmine/archive/2.2.2.tar.gz
tar -zxvf 2.2.2.tar.gz
cd redmine-2.2.2
git init .

Open the .gitignore file in your favourite editor and remove these lines:

Gemfile.lock
Gemfile.local
public/plugin_assets
config/initializers/session_store.rb
config/initializers/secret_token.rb
config/configuration.yml
config/email.yml

Install gems:

bundle install

Execute the Rake task to generate a session token:

rake generate_secret_token

Create an application on heroku:

heroku create NAME_FOR_YOUR_APP

Make a commit and push the changes to the heroku origin:

git add -A
git commit -m "prepare for heroku"
git push heroku

Make sure that all gems were installed on the heroku server. Then run the migrations and load the default data so Redmine works properly:

heroku run rake db:migrate
heroku run rake redmine:load_default_data

That’s all, you can test it now in the browser:

heroku open

The default user for Redmine is admin, and the password is admin too.

Email confirmations

Firstly, add an add-on to your application on heroku:

heroku addons:add sendgrid:starter

There is a limitation for the free version of this add-on: 200 emails per day. So if you send more emails per day, you have to change the add-on plan to a more appropriate one. For more information, please read the add-on description.

Create the config/configuration.yml file, add the following configuration and replace user_name and password with yours:

production:
  delivery_method: :smtp
  smtp_settings:
    address: "smtp.sendgrid.net"
    port: 25
    authentication: :plain
    domain: "heroku.com"
    user_name: "SENDGRID_USERNAME"
    password: "SENDGRID_PASSWORD"

Push the changes to heroku:

git add -A
git commit -m "email configuration"
gut push heroku

Save uploaded files to Amazon S3

If you are going to add attachments to tasks or upload files to Redmine, you can set up the redmine_s3 plugin: http://github.com/ka8725/redmine_s3.git. Please follow the link to read the installation instructions. This is my fork of the original gem: git://github.com/tigrish/redmine_s3.git

Since Redmine 2 was released, there have been many changes, and git://github.com/tigrish/redmine_s3.git no longer works with it. That’s why I forked this gem and changed it.

Don’t forget to remove the plugins/redmine_s3/.git directory before making a commit. Otherwise, this plugin won’t be installed on Heroku, and you won’t be able to save files to s3.

Create a configuration file for the redmine_s3 gem:

cp plugins/redmine_s3/config/s3.yml.example config/s3.yml

Edit config/s3.yml with your favourite editor: paste your AWS S3 credentials (security keys) and bucket name there. The bucket should already exist in S3.

Push changes to the heroku:

git add -A
git commit -m "s3 configuration"
gut push heroku

To start the server on heroku, you should also remove or comment out this code in config/environment.rb:

# Make sure there's no plugin in vendor/plugin before starting
vendor_plugins_dir = File.join(Rails.root, "vendor", "plugins")
if Dir.glob(File.join(vendor_plugins_dir, "*")).any?
  $stderr.puts "Plugins in vendor/plugins (#{vendor_plugins_dir}) are no longer allowed. " +
    "Please, put your Redmine plugins in the `plugins` directory at the root of your " +
    "Redmine directory (#{File.join(Rails.root, "plugins")})"
  exit 1
end

That’s it — you have a free bug tracker on the internet. Check it out: http://redmine-todo.heroku.com.

Conclusion

The combination of Redmine and Heroku is perfectly appropriate for developers who want to save money and have a good bug tracker. But if your project is open source and you don’t need to hide it on the internet, you can use free hosted redmine or Pivotal Tracker.

herokuredminerailshosting

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