Timeline for How to correctly add a path to PATH?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
39 events
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| Jan 7 at 14:31 | comment | added | V. Bozz |
Why not "$PATH" in double quotes? Should be safer, I guess
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| Jul 28, 2023 at 19:23 | comment | added | aioobe |
Note that a fresh Ubuntu installation does not read .profile any more.
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| Nov 23, 2022 at 20:40 | comment | added | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' |
@Dzintars No shell has a rule to read /etc/profile. Many systems set up /etc/profile to read /etc/profile.d/*. If so you'll see the code to do that in /etc/profile.d.
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| Nov 23, 2022 at 19:50 | comment | added | Dzintars |
No single word about /etc/profile.d/somefile.sh which also could contain PATH segments. It is used quite a lot in automation because dropping entire file is simpler than dealing with specific lines in general files like .profile.
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| Sep 26, 2022 at 11:01 | comment | added | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' |
@sancho.sReinstateMonicaCellio That answer didn't exist when I posted mine. I also don't agree that it “clearly explains” the problem: it spends a lot of time explaining the solution before mentioning the reason in passing (and it doesn't even actually state what an empty path component means). The solution in that answer is also rather complex and usually not really relevant: when PATH is empty, you typically don't need to add one extra directory to it, but to populate it with some standard directories. So I show how to do this.
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| Sep 26, 2022 at 10:34 | comment | added | sancho.s ReinstateMonicaCellio | @Gilles'SO-stopbeingevil' - Out of curiosity: why not linking to an existing answer in section "Potential complications in some system scripts", which clearly explains the case, and what to do about it? That would likely help readers (one of the main missions of SE), at least knowing better the pros and cons of using one form or another, and deciding based on that. | |
| Sep 7, 2022 at 17:33 | comment | added | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' |
@BenCarp .zshrc only works for programs started via a terminal. .zprofile applies to all programs. (Except on macOS which does things differently and AFAIK doesn't have a way to run shell code to set environment variables.)
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| Sep 7, 2022 at 16:20 | comment | added | Ben Carp |
Does it matter if we put it in .zshrc or zprofile?
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| S Sep 4, 2022 at 20:40 | history | edited | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
original advice about .profile was incorrect for macOS. Also, mention that these are only called at login.
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| S Sep 4, 2022 at 20:40 | history | suggested | xdavidliu | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
original advice about .profile was incorrect for macOS. Also, mention that these are only called at login.
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| Sep 4, 2022 at 19:27 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Sep 4, 2022 at 20:40 | |||||
| Mar 18, 2022 at 16:15 | comment | added | iconoclast | @TomRussell: you shouldn't be setting your environment variables in .bashrc, since that is specifically for interactive shells and you want your variables available to non-interactive shells too. | |
| Feb 18, 2021 at 10:59 | comment | added | sancho.s ReinstateMonicaCellio | As detailed here, this basic form of adding to path should likely be replaced by a more robust version. | |
| Feb 18, 2021 at 2:35 | comment | added | Tom Russell | What about when the element being added to $PATH is an environment variable set inside ~/.bashrc? | |
| Feb 28, 2020 at 13:10 | history | rollback | Paulo Tomé |
Rollback to Revision 14
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| S Feb 28, 2020 at 13:07 | history | suggested | Black | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added NOTE
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| Feb 28, 2020 at 12:31 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Feb 28, 2020 at 13:07 | |||||
| Feb 22, 2020 at 20:43 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Feb 22, 2020 at 22:51 | |||||
| Dec 4, 2019 at 11:50 | comment | added | therobyouknow |
could it also be export PATH ...
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| Jul 30, 2019 at 10:32 | comment | added | icc97 |
Thank you for this answer, perfectly detailed. You say "You should not define environment variables in ~/.bashrc", but unfortunately 100% of the programs that I have installed on my system that modify the path (FZF and Rust's Cargo) modify the path in .bashrc. I assume because FZF is written in Rust too it's following the pattern of Rust.
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| Jul 12, 2019 at 8:30 | comment | added | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' |
@priojeetpriyom Simple explanation: you don't need export.
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| Jul 12, 2019 at 5:49 | comment | added | priojeet priyom | Still not able to understand the complication with export. can you please simplify it? | |
| Jun 15, 2019 at 8:47 | history | edited | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
deleted 14 characters in body
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| S Jun 15, 2019 at 8:45 | history | suggested | Gabriel Staples | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
minor formatting and wording to clarify you only need 1 path command, and to make the correct file to place this in stand out
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| Jun 14, 2019 at 23:21 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Jun 15, 2019 at 8:45 | |||||
| S May 4, 2019 at 23:16 | history | edited | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Fix syntax and grammar
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| S May 4, 2019 at 23:16 | history | suggested | maf88 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Fix syntax and grammar
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| May 4, 2019 at 23:02 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S May 4, 2019 at 23:16 | |||||
| Oct 24, 2018 at 18:07 | history | edited | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
add a note about /etc/environment since a reader didn't realize that this wasn't a shell script
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| Oct 23, 2018 at 18:47 | history | edited | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
note that some systems already have ~/bin as suggested by patryk.beza
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| Oct 23, 2018 at 18:38 | history | edited | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Add an explicit note not to add `export` to the first section; move the bit about why you don't need it to a separate section because that's not "simple stuff"; use overstrike for the bad example; add a discussion of an initially empty PATH as suggested by James Tocknell
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| Nov 2, 2017 at 7:10 | history | edited | Stéphane Chazelas | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 187 characters in body
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:36 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://unix.stackexchange.com/ with https://unix.stackexchange.com/
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| Mar 20, 2017 at 10:18 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/
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| Jun 25, 2014 at 8:25 | history | edited | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
reorganize the answer to separate out the non-bash stuff; cite some other threads about duplicate removal, which is good to mention here; note that `export var=~` is expanded in bash (thanks mikeserv)
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| Jun 23, 2014 at 1:10 | history | edited | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
mention the necessity of double quotes in some shells
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| Feb 19, 2014 at 23:47 | history | edited | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
mention the relevance of the order, since it came up in http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/115964/program-installed-to-home-username-bin-and-added-to-path-not-launching
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| Oct 2, 2012 at 0:00 | vote | accept | Paolo | ||
| Dec 4, 2011 at 23:39 | history | answered | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | CC BY-SA 3.0 |