[OS X Emacs] Re: Environment variables and Aquamacs 2.0

[Erik Husby]

On May 26, 2010, at 3:44 PM, David Reitter wrote:
>
> Thanks.  I agree, we need to distinguish between (at least) two  
> environment variables that tend to be set system-wide: PATH and  
> MANPATH.   These seem to be typical environment variables to be set  
> system-wide, and perhaps that's why there is a special, comfortable  
> mechanism for setting them via /etc/paths and /etc/paths.d.
>
> For other environment variables, there's environment.plist, or, in  
> Aquamacs, ~/.bash_profile.
>
> Either way, I'm concerned with fixing the bug in Aquamacs if there  
> is any, and I would appreciate people's cooperation with that!
>


Interesting position to be in.

If Aquamacs is started from clicking on an icon, in the Macintosh  
world that should mean it gets environment variables from  
environment.plist like other Macintosh applications.

If Aquamacs is started from the command line then it should inherit  
the environment variables set by the shell used to start it.

So, I guess I would be surprised if my shell was tcsh (which is  
possible in Mac OS X), to find Aquamacs getting its environment  
variables from ~/.bash_profile. Just as I would be surprised when  
running emacs from any other Unix box.

I wonder what other Macintosh applications do?
---
Erik Husby
Senior Software Engineer I
Broad Institute
Rm. 2139, 320 Charles St, Cambridge, MA 02141-2023
mobile: 781.354.6669, office: 617.714.8443
email: mhusby at broadinstitute.org Jabber:mhusby at .broadinstitute.org