ruby on rails - Heroku deployment failed because of sqlite3 gem error

Question

I just started the ruby.railstutorial.org book by Michael Hartl and have been working through the first chapter. I am using mac book OS X, Terminal, and Sublime Text. Everything has gone according to plan, up until it was time to test deployment to Heroku. I am able to connect to Heroku and run the $ git push heroku master command. But the deployment fails:

Installing sqlite3 (1.3.5) with native extensions
       Gem::Installer::ExtensionBuildError: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
       /usr/local/bin/ruby extconf.rb
       checking for sqlite3.h... no
       sqlite3.h is missing. Try 'port install sqlite3 +universal'
       or 'yum install sqlite-devel' and check your shared library search path (the
       location where your sqlite3 shared library is located).
       *** extconf.rb failed ***
       Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of
       necessary libraries and/or headers.  Check the mkmf.log file for more
       details.  You may need configuration options.
       Provided configuration options:


An error occurred while installing sqlite3 (1.3.5), and Bundler cannot continue.
       Make sure that `gem install sqlite3 -v '1.3.5'` succeeds before bundling.
 !
 !     Failed to install gems via Bundler.
 !     
 !     Detected sqlite3 gem which is not supported on Heroku.
 !     http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/how-do-i-use-sqlite3-for-development
 !
 !     Heroku push rejected, failed to compile Ruby/rails app

Here is my Gemfile

source 'https://rubygems.org'

       gem 'rails', '3.2.8'

       # Bundle edge Rails instead:
       # gem 'rails', :git => 'git://github.com/rails/rails.git'

       group :development, :test do
   gem 'sqlite3', '1.3.5'
       end


       # Gems used only for assets and not required
       # in production environments by default.
       group :assets do
       gem 'sass-rails',   '~> 3.2.5'
       gem 'coffee-rails', '~> 3.2.2'

       # See https://github.com/sstephenson/execjs#readme for more supported runtimes
       # gem 'therubyracer', :platforms => :ruby

       gem 'uglifier', '>= 1.2.3'
       end

       gem 'jquery-rails', '2.0.2'

       group :production do
   gem 'pg', '0.12.2'
       end

       # To use ActiveModel has_secure_password
       # gem 'bcrypt-ruby', '~> 3.0.0'

       # To use Jbuilder templates for JSON
       # gem 'jbuilder'

       # Use unicorn as the app server
       # gem 'unicorn'

       # Deploy with Capistrano
       # gem 'capistrano'

       # To use debugger
       # gem 'debugger'

I have sqlite3 designated for development and not production, so I thought Heroku would just ignore it all together, but that does not seem to be the case.

Also, when i create the bundle i am using $ bundle install --without production

I know that some people has suggested to just install PG and use that, but I really want to stick to the tutorial as much as possible, before I venture out and try a different approach.

I am a bit lost at the moment, and not sure how to proceed from here. Any help that you can provide would be most appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

Heroku can't install the sqlite3 gem, for whatever reason. But you can tell bundler that it shouldn't be trying to except when developing.

In your Gemfile, replace gem 'sqlite3' with:

group :development, :test do
  gem 'sqlite3'
end
group :production do
  gem 'pg'
end

Then bundler on heroku, running as production, won't try to install it.