Running latest unstable nodejs (e.g. 0.11.6) on heroku

Question

I've not been having much luck finding an answer to this:

What is the simplest way to install/run the latest bleeding edge version of nodejs on heroku for an existing application?

There is the use of package.json engines as described here: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/nodejs-support

But this does not cover the latest unstable 0.11.x branch which is the one I'm after.

Answer 1

Edit: as of 2013-12-12 the default buildpack can vendor any version of nodejs

Just specify the version you want in your package.json, e.g.

"engines": {
    "node": "0.11.x"
}

Old:

I alomost wrote a buildback myself, but then found this one that vendors node binaries from nodejs.org:
https://github.com/arunoda/heroku-nodejs-binary-buildback

The instructions are simple, just don't forget to config:set NODE_VERSION.

YMMV: for me 0.11.7 caused NPM to fail to verify package checksums, but 0.11.6 works just fine.