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

[Norman Gray]

Jan, hello.

On 2010 May 28, at 02:19, Jan Dubois wrote:

>> I did try it, and a Terminal started from Spotlight inherits launchd's
>> environment, and launchd's initial environment is (usually? always?)
>> governed by environment.plist.
> 
> No, the launchd environment is separate from ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist.
> 
> It also looks like environment.plist is read only once and cached.  Any
> changes are only effective once I log out and back in (on both 10.5 and
> 10.6).

Indeed, they are certainly not the same thing, as I aimed to clarify further down the message.

After all this back and forth, the short version appears to be this: It appears that it is loginwindow that reads environment.plist at login time, and that loginwindow then modifies per-user launchd's environment to match.  That is why changes to the plist file take effect only on the next login.

Unfortunately, I can't find any reference that spells this out completely explicitly, but this does appear to match the observed behaviour, and what references I can find.

But as you say, everything appears to work on 10.6, so I think all is now sweetness and light!

Best wishes,

Norman


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