Heroku: Run a Rails application with a Python script on the same instance

I have a Python script in the /app/bin directory of my Rails app that contains a requirements.txt file that includes all of the dependencies it relies on.

How do I get it to run on the same Heroku instance that my Rails app currently runs on (my Rails app call the python script occasionally).

Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

1. Put the requirements.txt file in the / dir. Didn’t install any python dependencies
2. Tried running heroku run bash and then running pip install -r requirements.txt. Got the message pip command not found.
3. Tried installing pip through the bash interface using sudo python get-pip.py after curling the script as suggested on the pip installation site. Didn’t work — not surprisingly, they don’t support sudo commands on the instance.

I know Heroku is supposed to support pip out of the box, but it doesn’t seem to do anything with the requirements.txt file once it’s detected a Ruby app.

Answer

You can use the Heroku Buildpack Multi to run both the python and the ruby application on the same instance using their respective buildpacks.