Procfile

Use the Procfile to control how your application is started on NodeChef. For most BuildPacks, except the Python BuildPack, a Procfile is recommended else your application cannot be started.

For Python applications, a Procfile is mandatory else your application container will exit immediately after deploying without any process been started.

By default NodeChef starts your application using the command defined for the web process, you can however change what process command is used to start the application.

Note, NodeChef does not dynamically create worker containers on your behalf. You must explicitly create worker containers from the dashboard and then deploy the code to the worker containers and specify the process command to be used to start the application.

NodeChef also supports the release process type which defines a one-off command whenever a new version of your application is deployed.

web: npm install release: echo 'Unicorns live here'

NodeChef imposes a 30 minutes timeout for both the build and release phase. Please consider this for your release scripts.

To specify what command in the Procfile to be used to start the application instead of the web command, please see below.

If deploying using the CLI

Consider you have a Procfile as seen below and you want to deploy to this app and start the application using the command defined for the job process

web: npm install job: node jobs.js release: echo 'Unicorns live here'

Use the below command when deploying via the CLI to start the application using the command defined for the job process.

nodechef deploy -i my-app -cmd job

If deploying using git push

When configuring the git hook from the dashboard, you have an option to specify the start command. You can use this option to specify the start command as seen below: