hubot-slack throwing an error on startup

Question

I am trying to add a new hubot integration to our Slack channels. I am setting this up on a Windows machine and am deploying to a Heroku server. I followed the installation instructions provided here: https://github.com/slackhq/hubot-slack

I can create and run a new hubot instance on my local computer (calling "bin/hubot" in a Powershell prompt), but when I install the hubot-slack package and add "hubot-slack" to the external-scripts file I get an error. If I remove the value from the external-scripts file everything is fine.

PS C:\hubot> bin/hubot
jarvis> [Tue Dec 22 2015 15:18:24 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)] ERROR Error loading scripts from npm package - TypeError: require(...) is not a function
  at Robot.loadExternalScripts (C:\hubot\node_modules\hubot\src\robot.coffee:399:11)
  at C:\hubot\node_modules\hubot\bin\hubot:128:26
  at FSReqWrap.readFileAfterClose [as oncomplete] (fs.js:380:3)

If I include the adapter flag for Slack I get a different error. I tried setting HUBOT_SLACK_TOKEN as a System Environment variable.

PS C:\hubot> bin/hubot -a slack
[Tue Dec 22 2015 15:21:54 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)] ERROR No services token provided to Hubot

Every example I can find is including the HUBOT_SLACK_TOKEN in the call to hubot, but it doesn't work for me (I must be missing something).

PS C:\hubot> HUBOT_SLACK_TOKEN=xoxb-22211110000-123456781234ZZZZYYYYXXXX ./bin/hubot --adapter slack
HUBOT_SLACK_TOKEN=xoxb-17240119159-dBeAEc2X8M2O9vJBYzWj5KFW : The term
'HUBOT_SLACK_TOKEN=xoxb-17240119159-dBeAEc2X8M2O9vJBYzWj5KFW' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function,
script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is
correct and try again.
At line:1 char:1
+ HUBOT_SLACK_TOKEN=xoxb-22211110000-123456781234ZZZZYYYYXXXX ./bin/hubot --adapte ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: (HUBOT_SLACK_TOK...234ZZZZYYYYXXXX:String) [], CommandNotFoundException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException

To rule out something locally I deployed the application to Heroku, but I got a different error.

2015-12-22T22:28:49.426496+00:00 heroku[web.1]: State changed from crashed to starting
2015-12-22T22:14:54.739959+00:00 heroku[web.1]: State changed from starting to up
2015-12-22T22:14:55.133113+00:00 app[web.1]: [Tue Dec 22 2015 22:14:55 GMT+0000 (UTC)] ERROR Error loading scripts from npm package - TypeError: object is not a function
2015-12-22T22:14:55.133117+00:00 app[web.1]:   at Robot.loadExternalScripts (/app/node_modules/hubot/src/robot.coffee:399:11, <js>:269:39)
2015-12-22T22:14:55.133119+00:00 app[web.1]:   at fs.js:272:14
2015-12-22T22:14:55.133121+00:00 app[web.1]:   at Object.oncomplete (fs.js:108:15)
2015-12-22T22:14:56.115333+00:00 heroku[web.1]: State changed from up to crashed

package.json:

{
  "name": "jarvis",
  "version": "0.0.0",
  "private": true,
  "author": "Me <email@domain.com>",
  "description": "A friendly robot",
  "dependencies": {
    "hubot": "^2.17.0",
    "hubot-diagnostics": "0.0.1",
    "hubot-google-images": "^0.2.6",
    "hubot-google-translate": "^0.2.0",
    "hubot-help": "^0.1.2",
    "hubot-heroku-keepalive": "^1.0.1",
    "hubot-maps": "0.0.2",
    "hubot-pugme": "^0.1.0",
    "hubot-redis-brain": "0.0.3",
    "hubot-rules": "^0.1.1",
    "hubot-scripts": "^2.16.2",
    "hubot-shipit": "^0.2.0",
    "requirejs": "^2.1.22",
    "hubot-slack": "^3.4.2"
  },
  "engines": {
    "node": "0.10.x"
  }
}

external-scripts.json

[
  "hubot-diagnostics",
  "hubot-help",
  "hubot-heroku-keepalive",
  "hubot-google-images",
  "hubot-google-translate",
  "hubot-pugme",
  "hubot-maps",
  "hubot-redis-brain",
  "hubot-rules",
  "hubot-shipit",
  "requirejs",
  "hubot-slack"
]

Answer 1

On Windows, it seems that the mechanism is a little different from what it processes in Linux. The error 'HUBOT_SLACK_TOKEN is not recognized' is raised because it would read the value of 'HUBOT_SLACK_TOKEN' from environment variables in windows.

Create an environment variable 'HUBOT_SLACK_TOKEN' manually and set the value, it will work.

You could check it out in the source code in the github repo: slack.coffee.

options =
  token: process.env.HUBOT_SLACK_TOKEN
  autoReconnect: !exitProcessOnDisconnect
  autoMark: true
  exitOnDisconnect: exitProcessOnDisconnect
  proxyUrl: process.env.https_proxy

Answer 2

What intrigues me is this particular line:

Error loading scripts from npm package - TypeError: require(...) is not a function

Did you add the other scripts from the repo aswell?

There also might be something wrong with the node/npm/coffee installation/version on your windows machine. Make sure that those are installed and in a compatible version. Another thread had an issue with incompatible versions. Please tell us about the versions you use and try downgrading node to 0.12.x.

The way you use the token is fine.