Why does Heroku fail to detect Node.js buildpack?

Question

I git cloned a Node.js application (the version specified in the package.json being 4.1.2 and that of my local machine being 6.2.2) an

Answer 1

This means that a package.json file isn't checked into the root of your git project, so Heroku is detecting that it isn't a Node.js app. You can see this locally:

git show master:package.json

To fix it, you'll want to be sure there is a package.json in the root of your project (where there is also a .git directory), and add it to git:

git add package.json
git commit -m 'track package.json'

The phrasing ('failed to detect set buildpack') could be improved. It should probably say 'failed to detect Node.js app'. When the buildpack's "detect" script is run (https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-nodejs/blob/master/bin/detect), it looks for a package.json file to verify that there's a node app available to build.