Install foreman with Homebrew, Nix

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• foreman

Project history

David Dollar introduced Foreman in May 2011 as a way to start multi-process web applications from a Procfile, covering web, worker, and clock processes with shared environment handling and automatic port assignment.

The project grew beyond local development by adding export targets for process supervisors. Its manual documents running an app directly, running one-off commands, and exporting process definitions to formats such as init, upstart, systemd, runit, and supervisord.

Adoption history

Foreman's README points users to installation as a Ruby gem and warns Ruby users not to bundle Foreman inside an application's Gemfile, reflecting its role as a developer tool around an application rather than a library dependency.

The README's ports list shows the Procfile-runner idea spreading into other languages and ecosystems, including forego, node-foreman, goreman, honcho, shoreman, and other reimplementations.

How it is used

Foreman reads a Procfile, loads environment from .env by default or from files passed with --env, starts each declared process, prefixes output, and can scale process counts with formation options.

Package users typically install the foreman executable and keep Procfile and .env files in the application root, making it a bridge between twelve-factor app conventions, local shells, and service managers.

Why package nerds care

Foreman is historically important because it helped normalize Procfile as a portable, package-manager-distributed convention rather than only a Heroku deployment file.

It is also a small example of a package whose interface became a pattern: many later packages are not forks of Foreman, but compatibility ports of the same Procfile workflow.

Timeline

• 2011: David Dollar publishes the Introducing Foreman post and documents Procfile-based local process startup.
• 2011: The changelog records 0.26.x and 0.27.0 releases with .env loading and Travis CI configuration.
• 2012: Early releases add and refine concurrency, root directory handling, and one-off command execution.
• 2016: The changelog records systemd exporter work and related service-management fixes.
• 2024: Foreman 0.88.0 refreshes CI and updates documentation for systemd export.
• 2025: Foreman 0.90.0 is released with Ruby dependency updates.

Related projects

• Forego, goreman, node-foreman, honcho, shoreman, proclet, and other ports listed by the upstream README reuse Foreman's Procfile-runner model in other languages or shell environments.
• Foreman is related to platform Procfile conventions used by Heroku-style applications and to Unix service managers such as systemd, upstart, runit, and supervisord through its export functionality.

Sources

• https://blog.daviddollar.org/2011/05/06/introducing-foreman.html
• https://ddollar.github.io/foreman/
• https://github.com/ddollar/foreman
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ddollar/foreman/main/Changelog.md
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ddollar/foreman/master/README.md