CouchDB crashes at startup when path to config file has space(s)

I'm hoping to run CouchDB as a per-user Launch Agent on OS X. I'm using the coucdbx-core folder from the CouchDB Server.app as the base of my CouchDB deployment.

I'd like each user to have their own couch instance (on a different port), necessitating separate config files for each instance. The logical place to put these files is in ~/Library/Application Support/ for each user. I can put the entire distribution in ~/Library/Application Support/my-app/coucdbx, and put the .ini at ~/Library/Application Support/my-app/local.ini. Starting couchdb as bin/couchdb -a ../local.ini (from ~/Library/Application Support/my-app/coucdbx) works great. But I'd like to save every user the ~50MB couchdbx and install the couchdbx-core in a shared location (e.g. within my app's .app bundle). When I do this, the path to the per-user config file contains a space, and I get the following error when starting CouchDB:

$ bin/couchdb -n -a ~/Library/Application\ Support/us.physion.ovation/default.ini 
{"init terminating in do_boot",{{badmatch,{error,{bad_return,{{couch_app,start,[normal,["/Users/hs/prj/build-couchdb/build/etc/couchdb/default.ini","/Users/hs/prj/build-couchdb/build/etc/couchdb/local.ini"]]},{'EXIT',{{badmatch,{error,{error,enoent}}},[{couch_server_sup,start_server,1,[{file,"/Users/hs/prj/build-couchdb/dependencies/couchdb/src/couchdb/couch_server_sup.erl"},{line,56}]},{application_master,start_it_old,4,[{file,"application_master.erl"},{line,274}]}]}}}}}},[{couch,start,0,[{file,"/Users/hs/prj/build-couchdb/dependencies/couchdb/src/couchdb/couch.erl"},{line,18}]},{init,start_it,1,[]},{init,start_em,1,[]}]}}

Is there any way to provide a config file at the command line, if that config file's path includes space(s)? Despite my best efforts in the mailing list archives, wiki and google, I haven't been able to find a solution or a definitive "it can't work". Any help greatly appreciated.