Re: Where PATH is set

[William Scott <wgscott@chemistry.ucsc.edu>]

Hi Chris:

If you want, you can have my system administrator:

% print $ZSH_VERSION
3.0.8

When I compiled 4.2.5, ours hid the compiler.

/etc/zshenv makes the most sense, but they should also be appending or
prepending directories as you point out.

The only real solution to such 'political' problems is to buy your own
computer and be your own system administrator. Unfortunately, this did
not result in a factor of 3 pay increase.

If you want the job done right, you have to do it yourself I am afraid,
unless, unlike me, you work at a real university, instead of DIYU.

Bill






On Tue, 5 Sep 2006, Chris Johnson wrote:

> 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
>