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herokuheroku-postgres

Is a new database created when a Heroku application is forked?

I forked a heroku application (on the cli, using heroku fork). However, when I checked the fork application's config vars, the DATABASE_URL that it's set to is exactly the same as in the original application which I forked.

Can I push database schema changes to the new fork without affecting the original application? Or is there a need to fork the database as well?

Solution

  • From the rather obscure warning in the Heroku documentation, it sounds like sometimes the Heroku Postgres setup in the target app is not 100% correct after forking your app (i.e. as you observed, your DATABASE_URL is still pointing at the original app's DB, instead of at the forked app's DB). The remedy in this case is to promote the new DB (i.e. your new HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_COLOR_URL) to be the primary DB for the forked app, using heroku pg:promote, e.g:

    heroku pg:promote HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_COLOR_URL --app theForkedApp