--skip-pg will still copy DATABASE_URL about heroku-fork HOT 4 CLOSED

Or, at least have a better doc: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/fork-app

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#18

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This is contrary to my expectation: --skip-pg should not create a new database, but if DATABASE_URL points to an existing database, shouldn't it keep the config value?

Per https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/fork-app (as noted above),

If the DATABASE_URL value was manually set on sourceapp, for instance to share a database with another app or to add a parameter like ?pool=10, its value will be copied to targetapp verbatim. In other words, targetapp will be configured to use the same database as sourceapp.

This change seems to contradict that documentation.

What is the correct way now to maintain DATABASE_URL on a forked app – set it manually with heroku config after the app is created?

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Sorry for the super late reply and thanks for reporting this. That Dev Center article is somewhat incorrect actually, first of all you can't modify DATABASE_URL config var manually anymore. Seems like that part was documented for years ago when we still didn't have that restriction and hasn't been updated. I'll work on to update the doc.

You could still share one database with multiple apps by attaching, but if you attach in this way, you really shouldn't just copy the config variable to the forking app. It'll loose the information of "attaching", and whenever we need to update the DATABASE_URL (e.g. there is an issue with underlying instance and have to move the database to the different host) as it won't be updated automatically.

If you would like to share the one database between the original app and forked app, you should be attaching the addon after the fork.

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