heroku fork doesn't recognize a primary database properly

[keiko713]

When you have a database that is a primary but under the certain circumstances, heroku fork will create a new database within a new app, and do not make it as a primary database within the new app, which will end up copying the old app's DATABASE_URL to the new app. Now your forked app will be pointing to the original app's database, which can cause a nightmare.

Here is roughly what happens:

• You have AMBER database with the old app (which is a primary database and DATABASE_URL as well)
• During the fork, we create a new database and specify the attachment as AMBER with the new app (which means the new database is NOT recognized as a primary database)
• During the fork, we copy all config vars that are not yet in the new app. Since there is no DATABASE_URL config var with a new app, we copy the old app's DATABASE_URL to the new app

The reason of the old app's AMBER is not recognized as DATABASE_URL is a long story but it can certainly happen. One workaround that I can think of is to promote such database after the creation manually so that the new app will have a proper DATABASE_URL.
I don't think I'm explaining the issue well enough here, please ping me if you have nay questions. Also I'm happy to discuss about potential fixes.

[ccmcbeck]

I have the exact same problem and https://devcenter.heroku.com/changelog-items/438 suggests that changing an add-on should work, but you can't run addons:upgrade for heroku-postgresql. It complains "Upgrades are not supported by the heroku-postgresql addon. Add a second plan, migrate your data, then remove this plan." Wonder what the magic add-on would be? Maybe we just have to update DATABASE_URL ourselves?

[keiko713]

@ccmcbeck sorry to hear that you hit this issue. In your case, please run heroku pg:promote HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_<COLOR>. This will make database to be DATABASE_URL.

[ccmcbeck]

Interesting. That does create DATABASE_URL, but it also removes HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_. I guess that is by design.

From: Keiko Oda [email protected]
Reply-To: heroku/heroku-fork [email protected]
Date: Wednesday, August 3, 2016 at 6:27 PM
To: heroku/heroku-fork [email protected]
Cc: Chris Beck [email protected], Mention [email protected]
Subject: Re: [heroku/heroku-fork] heroku fork doesn't recognize a primary database properly (#19)

@ccmcbeckhttps://github.com/ccmcbeck sorry to hear that you hit this issue. In your case, please run heroku pg:promote HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_. This will make database to be DATABASE_URL.

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[nekopanic]

Just picked up another one as well. It looks like this:

• Original app - perform a pg:copy upgrade and use heroku config:set to set DATABASE_URL.
• Fork the app - it forks the colour database, but copies DATABASE_URL.

End result is a forked app with a new database but DATABASE_URL pointing to the original DB.