Pull in Viget posts

content/elsewhere/static-asset-packaging-rails-3-heroku/index.md

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+---
+title: "Static Asset Packaging for Rails 3 on Heroku"
+date: 2011-03-29T00:00:00+00:00
+draft: false
+needs_review: true
+canonical_url: https://www.viget.com/articles/static-asset-packaging-rails-3-heroku/
+---
+
+**Short Version:** the easiest way to combine and minify static assets
+(CSS and Javascript) in your Rails 3 app running on Heroku is to use
+[AssetPackager](https://github.com/sbecker/asset_packager) with [this
+fork of Heroku Asset
+Packager](https://github.com/cbeier/heroku_asset_packager). It just
+works.
+
+**Long version:** in his modern day classic, [High Performance Web
+Sites](https://www.amazon.com/High-Performance-Web-Sites-Essential/dp/0596529309),
+Steve Souders\' very first rule is to "make fewer HTTP requests." In
+practical terms, among other things, this means to combine separate CSS
+and Javascript files whenever possible. The creators of the Rails
+framework took this advice to heart, adding the `:cache => true` option
+to the
+[`javascript_include_tag`](http://apidock.com/rails/ActionView/Helpers/AssetTagHelper/javascript_include_tag)
+and
+[`stylesheet_link_tag`](http://apidock.com/rails/ActionView/Helpers/AssetTagHelper/stylesheet_link_tag)
+helpers to provide asset concatenation at no cost to the developer.
+
+As time went on, our needs outgrew the capabilities of `:cache => true`
+and solutions like
+[AssetPackager](https://github.com/sbecker/asset_packager) came onto the
+scene, offering increased control over how assets are combined as well
+as *minification*, stripping comments and unnecessary whitespace from
+CSS and Javascript files before packaging them together. Later, even
+more sophisticated solutions like
+[Jammit](https://documentcloud.github.com/jammit/) arrived, offering
+even more minification capabilities including inlining small images into
+CSS.
+
+Of course, static asset packaging wasn't the only part of the Rails
+ecosystem that was undergoing major changes during this time. An
+increased emphasis on ease of deployment saw the rise of
+[Capistrano](https://github.com/capistrano/capistrano/wiki),
+[Passenger](http://www.modrails.com/), and eventually
+[Heroku](https://heroku.com/), which offers hands-free system
+maintenance and simple `git push heroku` deployment. This simplification
+is not without trade-offs, though; you can only write to your app's
+`tmp` directory and the lack of root access means that you can't install
+additional software. Both of these limitations have ramifications for
+static asset packaging, namely:
+
+1.  Both `:cache => true` and standard AssetPackager work by writing
+    files into your app's `public` directory, which, as you can likely
+    guess, is *verboten*.
+
+2.  Jammit has several compression options, but all of them require Java
+    support, which we don't have on Heroku. You have the option of
+    compressing your assets and checking them into your repository by
+    hand, but I for one can't stand putting build artifacts in the repo.
+
+I've seen a lot of questions about how to do static asset packaging on
+Heroku and just as many bad answers (which I'll avoid linking to here).
+The best solution we've found uses
+[AssetPackager](https://github.com/sbecker/asset_packager) along with
+[this fork of Heroku Asset
+Packager](https://github.com/cbeier/heroku_asset_packager) that has been
+modified to work with Rails 3. It's not the sexiest solution, but it
+works, and you'll never have to think about it again.