Deploy with command-line

Overview

Learn how to deploy an application to Galaxy with an alternative way. Galaxy makes it simple to deploy, scale, and monitor your Meteor application. This guide provides step-by-step instructions for deploying your application using Meteor command-line.

Deploy a new app

You can use the Meteor CLI tool to deploy applications to Galaxy. Make sure that you are signed in to an authorized Meteor Developer Account that has permission to deploy to Galaxy. Use the CLI command meteor whoami to verify which Meteor Developer Account you are signed into.

The value of DEPLOY_HOSTNAME will depend on which region you are deploying to:
- To deploy to US East: DEPLOY_HOSTNAME=galaxy.meteor.com
- To deploy to EU West: DEPLOY_HOSTNAME=eu-west-1.galaxy.meteor.com
- To deploy to Asia-Pacific: DEPLOY_HOSTNAME=ap-southeast-2.galaxy.meteor.com

Select a hostname

Choose a hostname that the public can use to access your application. You can use a custom domain or you can use the included *.meteorapp.com domain.

- If you are using the included domain, use <hostname>.meteorapp.com for apps deployed to the US East region, <hostname>.eu.meteorapp.com for apps deployed to the EU West region, or <hostname>.au.meteorapp.com for apps deployed to the Asia-Pacific region.
- If you have a custom domain name, point your DNS to galaxy-ingress.meteor.com. More instructions on DNS configuration can be found here.

Mac and Linux

On the command line, within your application's directory, type:

DEPLOY_HOSTNAME=galaxy.meteor.com meteor deploy [hostname] --settings path-to-settings.json

- hostname is the fully qualified domain name where you're planning to host your application (for example, www.yourappname.com).
- path-to-settings.json is the path to your settings file (for example, './settings.json').

Windows

If you are using Windows, you need to set the environment variable first, then run the deployment command second (the syntax is the same as everything you'd write for meteor deploy). The commands will look like this:

$ SET DEPLOY_HOSTNAME=galaxy.meteor.com
$ meteor deploy [hostname] --settings path-to-settings.json

Cost

There is no cost for using the command-line deployment, as in this way you are using your own machines to build and deploy your apps.

If you want to use our push to deploy feature, read our main deployment guide.

Deployment options

Cache your build

You can use the option --cache-build to reuse your build in multiple deploys.

This is useful if you want to deploy the same bundle to different environments and also if your upload is failing so you can just upload again without a new build.

The cache checks the current git commit of your repository so you need to be deploying from a folder that is a Git repository.

DEPLOY_HOSTNAME=galaxy.meteor.com meteor deploy [hostname] --settings path-to-settings.json --cache-build

This was introduced on Meteor 1.11

Build Only

You can use the option --build-only to stop the process after the build.

This is useful if you want to deploy the same bundle to different environments but first you want to build without deploying the bundle yet.

It's recommended to use this option with --cache-build so your bundle is not deleted after the process. If you want to just check if your build is working then you don't need to use --cache-build.

DEPLOY_HOSTNAME=galaxy.meteor.com meteor deploy --cache-build --build-only

This was introduced on Meteor 2.3

Specify an account to deploy

Galaxy utilizes the following policy to select the account to deploy your application to:

If an application with the specified hostname already exists in an account, Galaxy deploys to the same account.
If it is a new application, Galaxy chooses the individual user account if it exists.
If it is a new application, and individual user account does not exist, Galaxy chooses the first Galaxy organization account that you are a member of.

If you are a member of two or more accounts, you can specify an owner username (available in Meteor 1.3) with --owner [username].

DEPLOY_HOSTNAME=galaxy.meteor.com meteor deploy [hostname] --settings path-to-settings.json --owner [username]

Where username is the Galaxy account username the application should deploy into. You need to have deploy privileges to the account. Note: this only applies for new applications, as any subsequent deploys will already be attached to an account and re-use the same account.

Using a deployment token

Galaxy can also accept deployment tokens, which are good for 90 days. You can pass METEOR_SESSION_FILE=token.json before meteor login to generate a login session token so you don’t have to share your login credentials with third-party service providers. This solution is recommended for continuous integration service providers.

You can use a deployment token as an alternative to typing in your username and password. You'll need to specify it both when running meteor login on your machine to generate the file, and when actually running meteor deploy in CI. Please note that your organization choice does not affect your deployment token.

Learn more

- Learn how to configure your apps on Galaxy.
- Read our main guide for deploying applications on Galaxy.

Updated on: 05/07/2024