Howto install Redmine on Heroku

A little howto to get Redmine running on Heroku:

1. Install Redmine locally. Follow instructions given on the Redmine Install page. I used development mode only in this step.
2. Setup git in the repository with git init
3. Edit the .gitignore file, and do the following operations in it:
   • remove Gemfile.lock,
   • remove /config/initializers/secret_token.rb,
   • add .svn
4. Edit the Gemfile file, and change the part declaring gems for SQLite3 and PostgreSQL this way:

   # Database gems
   platforms :mri, :mingw do
     group :production do
       gem "pg", ">= 0.11.0"
     end
   
     group :development do
       gem "sqlite3"
     end
   end
   

5. Run bundle install
6. Edit config/environment.rb to comment out the exit in case of plugins in vendor:

   # Load the rails application
   require File.expand_path('../application', __FILE__)
   
   # 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
   
   # Initialize the rails application
   RedmineApp::Application.initialize!
   

7. Add files to the Git index with git add .
8. Commit files with git commit -m"Blank Redmine"
9. Create the Heroku application with heroku create
10. Push the commit to Heroku with git push heroku master
11. Migrate database on Heroku with heroku run rake db:migrate
12. Load default values on Heroku with heroku run rake redmine:load_default_data
13. Restart your Redmine server on Heroku with heroku ps:restart

This way you have a Redmine server running just fine on Heroku.

For the record, I used Ruby 1.9.3, Rails 3.2.8, Redmine 2.1.0 and Heroku Toolbelt 2.32.4 (and also tried successfully with Redmine 2.0.3 on Rails 3.2.6).