The goal of this guide is to get your app up and running on Gigalixir. You will sign up for an account, prepare your app, deploy, and provision a database.

If you’re deploying an open source project, we provide consulting services free of charge. Contact us and we’ll send you a pull request with everything you need to get started.

Install the Command-Line Interface

Gigalixir has a web interface at https://console.gigalixir.com/, but you will likely still want the CLI.

macOS with Homebrew

Prerequisites:

Install the CLI with:

brew tap gigalixir/brew
brew install gigalixir

When you get out of date, upgrade to the latest version with:

brew update
brew upgrade gigalixir

macOS

Prerequisites:

Install the CLI and add the executable to your path with:

pip3 install gigalixir --user
echo "export PATH=\$PATH:$(python3 -m site --user-base)/bin" >> ~/.profile
source ~/.profile

When you get out of date, upgrade to the latest version with:

pip3 install gigalixir --user --upgrade

Linux

Prerequisites:

For example, in a debian system you might run something like this:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y python3 python3-pip git-core curl

Install the CLI and add the executable to your path with:

pip3 install gigalixir --user
echo "export PATH=\$PATH:$(python3 -m site --user-base)/bin" >> ~/.profile
source ~/.profile

When you get out of date, upgrade to the latest version with:

pip3 install gigalixir --user --upgrade

Windows

Prerequisites:

Install the CLI with:

pip3 install gigalixir --user

Make sure the executable is in your path, if it isn’t already.

On Windows Powershell, try something similar to this. Note this may vary based on your python version.

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Path", $env:Path + ";$HOME\appdata\roaming\python\python38\Scripts", "Machine")

If you have any trouble, please reach out for help.

When you get out of date, upgrade to the latest version with:

pip3 install gigalixir --user --upgrade

You can verify installation by running:

gigalixir version

Create an Account

If you already have an account, skip this step.

Create an account using the following command. It will prompt you for your email address and password. You will have to confirm your email before continuing. Gigalixir’s free tier does not require a credit card, but you will be limited to 1 instance with 0.2GB of memory and 1 postgresql database limited to 10,000 rows.

gigalixir signup

Or if you want to use your Google account:

gigalixir signup:google

Log In

If you signed up with your Google account, you should already be logged in. Otherwise, log in. This will grant you an API key. It will also optionally modify your ~/.netrc file so that all future commands are authenticated.

gigalixir login

Verify by running:

gigalixir account

Prepare Your App

Most likely, there is nothing you need to do here and you can skip this step and “just deploy”, but it depends on what version of phoenix you’re running and whether you are okay running in mix mode or elixir releases.

For more information, see modifying an existing app.

Or if you just want to give Gigalixir a spin, clone our reference app.

git clone https://github.com/gigalixir/gigalixir-getting-started.git

Then just follow the instructions in the README under the Deploying section.

Set Up App for Deploys

To create your app, run the following command.

It will also set up a git remote. This must be run from within a git repository folder. An app name will be generated for you, but you can also optionally supply an app name if you wish using gigalixir create -n $APP_NAME. (There is currently no way to change your app name once it is created).

If you like, you can also choose which cloud provider and region using the --cloud and --region options. We currently support gcp in v2018-us-central1 or europe-west1 and aws in us-east-1 or us-west-2. The default is v2018-us-central1 on gcp.

cd gigalixir-getting-started
APP_NAME=$(gigalixir create)

Verify that the app was created, by running:

gigalixir apps

Verify that a git remote was created by running:

git remote -v

If someone in your organization has already created the Gigalixir app and you only need to add the proper git remote to your local repository configuration, you can skip the app creation and add a the gigalixir git remote by using the git:remote command:

gigalixir git:remote $APP_NAME

Specify Versions

The default Elixir version is defined here which is quite old and it’s a good idea to use the same version in production as you use in development; so let’s specify them.

Supported Elixir and erlang versions can be found at https://github.com/gigalixir/gigalixir-buildpack-elixir#version-support

echo "elixir_version=1.11.3" > elixir_buildpack.config
echo "erlang_version=23.2" >> elixir_buildpack.config

Same for nodejs:

echo "node_version=14.15.4" > phoenix_static_buildpack.config

Don’t forget to commit:

git add elixir_buildpack.config phoenix_static_buildpack.config
git commit -m "set elixir, erlang, and node version"

Phoenix v1.6 or greater uses esbuild to compile your assets but Gigalixir images come with npm, so we will configure npm directly to deploy our assets.

Add a assets/package.json file if you don’t have any with the following:

{
  "scripts": {
    "deploy": "cd .. && mix assets.deploy && rm -f _build/esbuild"
  }
}

Don’t forget to commit:

git add assets/package.json
git commit -m "assets deploy script"

Provision a Database

Phoenix 1.4+ enforces the DATABASE_URL env var at compile time so let’s create a database first, before deploying.

gigalixir pg:create --free

Verify by running:

gigalixir pg

Once the database is created, verify your configuration includes a DATABASE_URL by running:

gigalixir config

Deploy!

Finally, build and deploy.

git push gigalixir

Wait a minute or two for the app to pass health checks. You can check the status by running:

gigalixir ps

Once it’s healthy, verify it works:

curl https://$APP_NAME.gigalixirapp.com/

Or you could also run:

gigalixir open

Run Migrations

We try to make it easy by providing a special command. The command runs on your existing app container, so you’ll need to make sure your app is running first and set up your SSH keys.

gigalixir account:ssh_keys:add "$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)"

Then run:

gigalixir ps:migrate

For more, see How to Run Migrations..

What’s Next?

NEXT ⟶