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

[Norman Gray]

David, hello.

On 2010 May 26, at 20:44, David Reitter wrote:

> On May 26, 2010, at 3:02 PM, Norman Gray wrote:
>> 
>> There may be some talking at cross-purposes here, but I don't think that /etc/paths has much relevance here (since it's simply a way of setting the system-wide default value for PATH).
>> 
>> Also, I don't think that the ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist mechanism is obsolete.  Although I can't find a specific reference for this (I'd have thought it would be in loginwindow documentation), the note at [1] gives this file as the canonical way of setting per-user session-wide environment variables.  That's dated late 2009, so we can take it that it's current for 10.6.
> 
> 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.

I take your point, though I would fairly strenuously disagree that editing files under /etc would count as a 'comfortable mechanism'!  It's also necessarily system-wide rather than user specific.  But, as you stress, that's not really the point in this thread.

> 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

For what it's worth, I don't see, in Aquamacs, environment variables set in my .bashrc/.zshrc, just environment.plist variables.  I haven't consciously disabled anything relevant to this.  I offer this as a data point, which sounds similar to the OP's question -- what might I have undeliberately disabled?

Best wishes,

Norman


-- 
Norman Gray  :  http://nxg.me.uk