Install AWS CLI on heroku - heroku

Question

I would like to use the AWS CLI in an Heroku Ruby project (mainly to use it with a thin wrapper from the ruby application).
Is there any standard way to install additional software like this into an existing application with a Gemfile?

Answer 1

Here are the steps that worked for me:
1) use buildpack-multi to install buildpacks both for ruby and python:
heroku config:add BUILDPACK_URL=https://github.com/ddollar/heroku-buildpack-multi.git
echo "https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-ruby" >> .buildpacks
echo "https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-python" >> .buildpacks
echo "web: bundle exec rails server -p $PORT" > Procfile
2) add a requirements.txt file to the root of the project, containing the desired pip package:
echo "awscli" >> requirements.txt
3) deploy to Heroku
git add .buildpacks requirements.txt Procfile
git commit -a -m "use buildpacks for ruby and python, install aws cli"
git push heroku
This works just fine and allows me to use my aws scripts from my ruby app.
As was pointed out to me, using fog is probably the better solution in the long term.

Answer 2

You can use Docker to vendor things for Heroku apps.
Add a Dockerfile
FROM ubuntu:14.04
COPY . /app
Then build an image and run a container:
$ docker build .
$ docker run -it $image_id bash
# apt-get update && apt-get install jq
Now you can copy the data out from another terminal:
$ docker cp $container_id:/usr/bin/jq .
The aws-cli tool is tricker because it needs a whole Python environment.

Answer 3

You should add the Heroku buildpack for the AWS CLI via running:
$ heroku buildpacks:add heroku-community/awscli
More details can be found on herokus page, or in the buildpack's git repo.