Scaling Heroku's release type

During release, it's possible to consume so much memory, Heroku kills the dyno before it finishes executing.

heroku[release.xxxx]: Process running mem=1038M(202.8%)
heroku[release.xxxx]: Error R15 (Memory quota vastly exceeded)
heroku[release.xxxx]: Stopping process with SIGKILL
heroku[release.xxxx]: Process exited with status 137
heroku[release.xxxx]: State changed from up to complete

When that happens, the release fails (even though it may say "complete"). Whilst it's a good idea not to use huge amounts of memory during release, sometimes it's unavoidable.

Releases run in a Standard-1X dyno, regardless of what the other dynos are set to. This has a 512MB RAM limit, however Heroku will let it push over for short periods.

Setting the release dyno type can't be done from the dashboard, but can be done from the CLI:

heroku ps:type release=Standard-1X -a <app>