run bower install on heroku within a java/play project

Question

I need to deploy a java/playframework project on heroku. I'm using bower to install my frontend dependencies such as angular etc. Is there any way to run bower install with a "non-nodejs" project?

I've tried to run:

heroku run bower install

Answer 1

You could combine a buildpack that builds your frontend with your play buildpack using heroku-buildpack-multi:

$ heroku config:add BUILDPACK_URL=https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-multi.git

From here you will need to create a .buildpacks file which contains the buildpacks you wish to run when you deploy:

$ cat .buildpacks
https://github.com/djng/heroku-buildpack-webapp-client.git
https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-play

I created the heroku-buildpack-webapp-client that supports grunt, bower and compass. Maybe you can use this one.

The idea is that your repository contains a client folder containing your frontend and a gruntfile for your build process. The gruntfile should build your frontend into a client/dist folder.