Mac OS X launchctl plist for Homebrew-based RabbitMQ installations. Place in: ~/Library/LaunchAgents

com.rabbitmq.rabbitmq-server.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>KeepAlive</key>
  <true/>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>com.rabbitmq.rabbitmq-server</string>
  <key>Program</key>
  <string>/usr/local/sbin/rabbitmq-server</string>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
  <key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
  <dict>
    <key>PATH</key>
    <string>/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/bin</string>
  </dict>
  <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
  <string>/usr/local/var</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Cool, thanks. That does work now. For anyone else that might get the "erlexec: HOME must be set" error, simply add it to your EnvironmentVariables key. Any path should work.

  <key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
  <dict>
    <key>PATH</key>
    <string>/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/bin</string>
    <key>HOME</key>
    <string>/Users/{{USERNAME}}</string>
  </dict>

2 years later it still works, thanks!

Small note that if you want this to run as a daemon, put it in /Library/LaunchDaemons instead. You may need to use ProgramArguments instead of Program though, man launchctl.plist and man execvp to be sure.

A LaunchAgents must be loaded manually as LaunchDaemons using sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/com.rabbitmq.rabbitmq-server.plist ? I made it and it's works perfectly but I don't know if it was necessary. Thanks for the share.

If it's brew-installed, you can try the following instructions instead that you can get by brew info rabbitmq

$ brew info rabbitmq
<snip>

To have launchd start rabbitmq at login:
    ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/rabbitmq/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
Then to load rabbitmq now:
    launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.rabbitmq.plist
Or, if you don't want/need launchctl, you can just run:
    rabbitmq-server

2017 - brew options changed and its much simpler now:

$ brew info rabbitmq
<snip>

To have launchd start rabbitmq now and restart at login:
  brew services start rabbitmq
Or, if you don't want/need a background service you can just run:
  rabbitmq-server

@Aarpy
thanks for this. I was on the same boat scratching my head where the plist are found

@Aarpy that is very useful thanks. But it does not behave the same as I usually do with sudo (sudo rabbitmq-server). Any idea why?

sudo brew services start rabbitmq doesn't work either.
And performing ps aux | grep rabbit doesn't show any processes when using the brew commands, only when I do sudo rabbitmq-server.

Tracking issue Homebrew/homebrew-core#17446