Heroku has a policy of ignoring all branches but 'master'.
While I'm sure Heroku's designers have excellent reasons for this policy (I'm guessing for storage and performance optimization), the consequence to me as a developer is that whatever local topic branch I may be working on, I would like an easy way to switch Heroku's master to that local topic branch and do a "git push heroku -f" to over-write master on Heroku.
What I got from reading the "Pushing Refspecs" section of http://progit.org/book/ch9-5.html is
git push -f heroku local-topic-branch:refs/heads/master
What I'd really like is a way to set this up in the configuration file so that "git push heroku" always does the above, replacing local-topic-branch with the name of whatever my current branch happens to be. If anyone knows how to accomplish that, please let me know!
The caveat for this, of course, is that this is only sensible if I am the only one who can push to that Heroku app/repository. A test or QA team might manage such a repository to try out different candidate branches, but they would have to coordinate so that they all agree on what branch they are pushing to it on any given day.
Needless to say, it would also be a very good idea to have a separate remote repository (like GitHub) without this restriction for backing everything up to. I'd call that one "origin" and use "heroku" for Heroku so that "git push" always backs up everything to origin, and "git push heroku" pushes whatever branch I'm currently on to Heroku's master branch, overwriting it if necessary.
Would this work?
[remote "heroku"] url = [email protected]:my-app.git push = +refs/heads/*:refs/heads/master
I'd like to hear from someone more experienced before I begin to experiment, although I suppose I could create a dummy app on Heroku and experiment with that.
As for fetching, I don't really care if the Heroku repository is write-only. I still have a separate repository, like GitHub, for backup and cloning of all my work.
Footnote: This question is similar to, but not quite the same as Good Git deployment using branches strategy with Heroku?
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1The currently most voted answer is the idiomatic way of doing this (and Imo the real correct answer)Selali Adobor– Selali Adobor2017年02月07日 00:33:54 +00:00Commented Feb 7, 2017 at 0:33
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An alternative https resource about pushing refspecs: git scm documentation about pushing refspecs.Dylan Landry– Dylan Landry2018年11月09日 19:35:13 +00:00Commented Nov 9, 2018 at 19:35
13 Answers 13
See https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/git#deploying-code
$ git push heroku yourbranch:main
6 Comments
git push :master which deletes the master branch by overwriting it with nothing. That's different than overwriting it with another branch. Heroku probably has safeguards in place to prevent deleting the master branch.When using a wildcard, it had to be present on both sides of the refspec, so +refs/heads/*:refs/heads/master will not work. But you can use +HEAD:refs/heads/master:
git config remote.heroku.push +HEAD:refs/heads/master
Also, you can do this directly with git push:
git push heroku +HEAD:master
git push -f heroku HEAD:master
6 Comments
git push commands do the same thing. See git push --help for the meaning of the -f option and the + in the refspec.-f stands for force. It worked for me with jassa’s answer.HEAD just refers to the very last commit in your for branch (the head of the branch), and because of the way git works will include every preceding commit up to that point.git push -f heroku local_branch_name:master
4 Comments
-f or --force, and it's always best to ensure you know what you're doing when you force push.For me, it works,
git push -f heroku otherBranch:master
The -f (force flag) is recommended in order to avoid conflicts with other developers’ pushes. Since you are not using Git for your revision control, but as a transport only, using the force flag is a reasonable practice.
source :- offical docs
Comments
The safest command to push different local Git branches to Heroku/master.
git push -f heroku branch_name:master
Note: Although, you can push without using the -f, the -f (force flag) is recommended in order to avoid conflicts with other developers’ pushes.
2 Comments
-f blindly!git push heroku $(git branch --show-current):master
Alternately:
git push heroku HEAD:master
1 Comment
Also note that if your using the git flow system and your feature branch might be called
feature/mobile_additions
and with a git remote called stagingtwo, then the command to push to heroku would be
git push stagingtwo feature/mobile_additions:master
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You should check out heroku_san, it solves this problem quite nicely.
For example, you could:
git checkout BRANCH
rake qa deploy
It also makes it easy to spin up new Heroku instances to deploy a topic branch to new servers:
git checkout BRANCH
# edit config/heroku.yml with new app instance and shortname
rake shortname heroku:create deploy # auto creates deploys and migrates
And of course you can make simpler rake tasks if you do something frequently.
Comments
I found this helpful. http://jqr.github.com/2009/04/25/deploying-multiple-environments-on-heroku.html
1 Comment
Heroku labs now offers a github add-on that let's you specify which branch to push.
See Heroku's write up on this beta feature.
You'll need to sign-up as a beta tester for the time-being.
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At some point in 2022, the syntax 'git push heroku otherbranchname:master' stopped working for me. It would always just return "Everything up-to-date". After consulting the Heroku docs, I found that "master" had been changed to "main", so the syntax is now like this:
git push heroku otherbranchname:main
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I think it should be
push = refs/heads/*:refs/heads/*
instead...
Comments
$ git push heroku yourbranch:main
if you are using the heroku web dashboard, you can choose and deploy the github branch directly from there as well which is way better.