Play 2.2 application crashes on Heroku

Question

After moving from Play 2.0.4 to Play 2.2.0 I get this error when deploying on Heroku:

Oct 15 13:23:12 heroku/web.1: Starting process with command `target/universal/stage/bin/demagog -Dhttp.port=${PORT} ${JAVA_OPTS} -Dconfig.resource=${DEMAGOG_ENVIRONMENT}.conf`
Oct 15 13:23:13 app/web.1: Picked up JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS: -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -Djava.rmi.server.useCodebaseOnly=true
Oct 15 13:23:13 app/web.1: Bad application path: -Xmx384m
Oct 15 13:23:15 heroku/web.1: State changed from starting to crashed
Oct 15 13:23:15 heroku/web.1: Process exited with status 0
Oct 15 13:24:37 heroku/web.1: Starting process with command `target/universal/stage/bin/demagog -Dhttp.port=${PORT} -Dconfig.resource=${DEMAGOG_ENVIRONMENT}.conf`
Oct 15 13:24:37 app/web.1: Picked up JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS: -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -Djava.rmi.server.useCodebaseOnly=true
Oct 15 13:24:37 app/web.1: Play server process ID is 2
Oct 15 13:24:37 app/web.1: Oops, cannot start the server.
Oct 15 13:24:37 app/web.1: java.lang.IllegalStateException: System property demagog.defaultUser must be set. 

I don't understand this message

Bad application path: -Xmx384m

The second problem I can see is that my Play application can't found system property 'demagog.defaultUser', but this property is set in JAVA_OPTS environment variable. So it should work. Maybe it's just a consequence of the above problem? Any hints?

---

UPDATED

I have removed ${JAVA_OPTS} from the Procfile as @jan suggested. The first error

Bad application path: -Xmx384m

is not here anymore, but the system property 'demagog.defaultUser' is still not set.

Oct 16 10:50:35 heroku/web.1: Starting process with command `target/universal/stage/bin/demagog -Dhttp.port=${PORT} -Dconfig.resource=${DEMAGOG_ENVIRONMENT}.conf`
Oct 16 10:50:35 app/web.1: Picked up JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS: -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -Djava.rmi.server.useCodebaseOnly=true
Oct 16 10:50:35 app/web.1: Play server process ID is 2
Oct 16 10:50:35 app/web.1: Oops, cannot start the server.
Oct 16 10:50:35 app/web.1: java.lang.IllegalStateException: System property demagog.defaultUser must be set.
...
Oct 16 10:50:35 app/web.1: at play.api.Play$.start(Play.scala:87)
Oct 16 10:50:35 app/web.1: at play.core.StaticApplication.<init>(ApplicationProvider.scala:52)
Oct 16 10:50:35 app/web.1: at play.core.server.NettyServer$.createServer(NettyServer.scala:243)
Oct 16 10:50:35 app/web.1: at play.core.server.NettyServer$$anonfun$main$3.apply(NettyServer.scala:279)
Oct 16 10:50:35 app/web.1: at play.core.server.NettyServer$$anonfun$main$3.apply(NettyServer.scala:274)
Oct 16 10:50:35 app/web.1: at scala.Option.map(Option.scala:145)
Oct 16 10:50:35 app/web.1: at play.core.server.NettyServer$.main(NettyServer.scala:274)
Oct 16 10:50:35 app/web.1: at play.core.server.NettyServer.main(NettyServer.scala)
Oct 16 10:50:35 heroku/web.1: Process exited with status 255 

when I run heroku command

heroku config

I can see the system property is included in the JAVA_OPTS environment variable

JAVA_OPTS: -Xmx384m -Xss512k -XX:+UseCompressedOops -Ddemagog.defaultUser=xxx ...

Answer 1

You probably haven't removed ${JAVA_OPTS} from your Procfile. With Play 2.2 the JAVA_OPTS are included in the generated start script so you don't have to include them in the Procfile anymore.

What happens then is that the start script tries to interpret your JAVA_OPTS as app parameters.

Answer 2

Ok, I finally found it. The problem with setting my system property using environment variable JAVA_OPTS is that:

Environment variables are case sensitive in Unix while case insensitive in Windows.

with combination that the script generated by the sbt-native-packager reads java_opts environment variable. So you have to set java_opts (lower case) environment variable within Heroku.