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I'm working locally on a NodeJS Heroku app, and I'd like to use foreman to run my app. It apparently didn't install with the Heroku toolbelt (has anyone else had this problem?).

Is there a way to re-install the Heroku toolbelt to get foreman? Or could I get foreman from git? I saw the instructions here but after getting the repo and executing:

git submodule init
git submodule update

It still says that the "foreman" command is not found. What can I do to get foreman to work?


Edit: I'm using Ubuntu

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3 Answers 3

up vote 4 down vote accepted

Your best bet is to probably install it with Rubygems. You don't mention which OS your on, but we'll assume your not on something mental like Windows (;))

gem -v

if you've got a version back, skip the next bit. You should only need to install RubyGems on Ubuntu (OS X has it in most recent versions)

Ubuntu only

sudo apt-get install rubygems


gem install foreman
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This will install the correct version of foreman even if I'm using Node.js (I'm just paying attention to the fact that it is installed as a Ruby gem)? Sorry, kind of a simpleton question... –  bigpopakap Jan 18 '12 at 15:15
Yes, Foreman is a ruby gem, nothing else. –  Neil Middleton Jan 18 '12 at 15:40
The Heroku tools (which run separately from your application, and are used for interacting with the Heroku system) are ruby based. Whether you're using python, node.js, or whatever other framework, doing the actual interaction with heroku will use these ruby-based tools. So installing gems makes sense :-) –  Kirsten Jones Jan 18 '12 at 20:19

The project you linked to, http://theforeman.org/projects/foreman, is not Heroku's foreman.

Heroku's foreman is a Ruby gem, and must be installed as a Ruby gem:

$ [sudo] gem install foreman

Whether you need to use sudo depends on your environment, how you installed ruby and rubygems, etc.

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I just wanted to amend @Neil's answer. You need to install ruby, not rubygems.

sudo apt-get install ruby

When Ruby is installed you can then install foreman.

gem install foreman --no-rdoc --no-ri

(You don't need --no-rdoc --no-ri but I like to install gems without the documentation on production boxes)

Also take a look at rvm if you're a Ruby person. You might not want to use Ubuntu/Debian's version of Ruby.

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