I got stuck when trying to install the mediainfo package through apt install mediainfo. Using buildpacks failed and the solution was to use heroku-buildpack-apt.

3rd party build packs

Search the 3rd party Heroku buildpacks to find if someone has already created a buildpack for your Linux package.

There were plenty of options for MediaInfo. I chose one and ran this command in the Heroku CLI:

heroku buildpacks:add https://github.com/bubobox/heroku-buildpack-mediainfo -a <app>

Make sure you re-release your app so changes take place. The fastest way to do that is to add an environment variable to your app and Heroku will automatically re-release it.

Go to Settings => Config Vars => Reveal Config Vars

This approach failed with the following error as I tried to run MediaInfo in the Rails console:

MediaInfo.from('http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/gtv-videos-bucket/sample/BigBuckBunny.mp4')

I got this error:

version `CURL_OPENSSL_3' not found (required by /app/vendor/mediainfo/mediainfo)

I tried other buildpacks but the same error came up. I suspect it’s because the available buildpacks haven’t been updated in a while. I didn’t want to write my own buildpack.

Working Solution

Install the MediaInfo package yourself by using the heroku-buildpack-apt buildpack.

Add this buildpack from the Heroku CLI:

heroku buildpacks:add --index 1 heroku-community/apt

Create a file named Aptfile and add a package name on each new line that you want Heroku to automatically add to your application. In my case, I wanted mediainfo apt package.

# AptFile
# You can write comments in this file.
mediainfo

Redeploy your app to Heroku and try out MediaInfo in the Rails Console again. It worked for me.