Where PATH is set

[Chris Johnson <cjohnson@cs.utk.edu>]

I have a political question I could use some help on.  My system
administrators currently set PATH in /etc/zshrc.  The assignment is
literal; no existing value is checked for.  They assign the exact same
thing to PATH in /etc/zshenv so that "ssh machine command" will work the
same way.

This setup forces me to similarly assign PATH twice, once in ~/.zshenv
and once in ~/.zshrc.  My changes to PATH in ~/.zshenv are overwritten
by the system's /etc/zshrc.  But I want PATH to contain the same
directories whether the shell is interactive or not.  So, I need to
assign to PATH again in ~/.zshrc.  I think this is a horrible setup, a
trap for inconsistencies just waiting to snare users, but the sysadmins
think its a non-issue.

Peter has some lines in the zsh Guide, section 2.5.10, about how zshenv
is the cleanest place to set environment variables, PATH included.  I've
pointed this out to my sysadmins, but they are looking for further
documentation and recommendation of this practice.  Does anyone have any
input that I could send their way?

I suppose you could disagree with me if you wanted to, but I won't
forward that along to them.

-- 
Chris Johnson
cjohnson@cs.utk.edu
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~cjohnson