Error starting foreman (Dotenv::FormatError)

Question

I'm trying to get a node.js app to start using foreman. I run the forman start command in the projects root directory and I keep getting the following error:

/Users/Hebime/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/gems/dotenv-0.8.0/lib/dotenv/environment.rb:34:in `block in load': Line "== project-ps Config Vars" doesn't match format (Dotenv::FormatError)
from /Users/Hebime/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/gems/dotenv-0.8.0/lib/dotenv/environment.rb:27:in `each'
from /Users/Hebime/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/gems/dotenv-0.8.0/lib/dotenv/environment.rb:27:in `load'
from /Users/Hebime/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/gems/dotenv-0.8.0/lib/dotenv/environment.rb:23:in `initialize'
from /Users/Hebime/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/gems/foreman-0.63.0/lib/foreman/engine.rb:172:in `new'
from /Users/Hebime/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/gems/foreman-0.63.0/lib/foreman/engine.rb:172:in `load_env'
from /Users/Hebime/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/gems/foreman-0.63.0/lib/foreman/cli.rb:136:in `load_environment!'
from /Users/Hebime/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/gems/foreman-0.63.0/lib/foreman/cli.rb:38:in `start'
from /Users/Hebime/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/gems/thor-0.18.1/lib/thor/command.rb:27:in `run'
from /Users/Hebime/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/gems/thor-0.18.1/lib/thor/invocation.rb:120:in `invoke_command'
from /Users/Hebime/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/gems/thor-0.18.1/lib/thor.rb:363:in `dispatch'
from /Users/Hebime/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/gems/thor-0.18.1/lib/thor/base.rb:439:in `start'
from /Users/Hebime/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/gems/foreman-0.63.0/bin/foreman:7:in `<top (required)>'
from /Users/Hebime/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/bin/foreman:23:in `load'
from /Users/Hebime/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/bin/foreman:23:in `<main>'
from /Users/Hebime/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/bin/ruby_noexec_wrapper:14:in `eval'
from /Users/Hebime/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p448/bin/ruby_noexec_wrapper:14:in `<main>'

The project works perfectly fine on my co-workers machines using the same command. I'm using OSX 10.8.4.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I ran into this error too. In my case I had accidentally included an "activate" command inside my .env file:

. venv/bin/activate
export DEBUG=True
...

When I ran foreman, it parsed the .env file and it stumbled on that first line. By commenting out that activate command, the problem went away.