Re: PSA: Mac OS X El Capitan upgrade might break your $PATH

[Kurtis Rader <krader@skepticism.us>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1159 bytes --]

On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 3:29 PM, Andrew Janke <andrew@apjanke.net> wrote:

> That path_helper output doesn't look random or hash based. That looks like:
>
[snip]

> The man page could stand to be more thorough and clear, but I don't think
> it's randomly rearranging your path. And the `man path_helper` page does
> indicate where the default paths come from, though it's buried a few
> paragraphs down.
>

Yes, your analysis appears correct. In all likelihood the program is
working as intended. Clearly the man page does not match the actual
behavior as the very first sentence says "...appends their contents to the
PATH...". The man page says nothing at all about the sequence the
directories appear being changed. And while the man page goes on to explain
that the "default PATH ... values are obtained from /etc/paths..." that is
misleading. The use of the word "default" implies to me that if the current
PATH already contains those directories the existing PATH will be used as
is.

Yet I think we can all agree that the man page is crap and the design of
path_helper is crap :-)

-- 
Kurtis Rader
Caretaker of the exceptional canines Junior and Hank