Re: environment settings

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com>]

On Jun 18, 12:52pm, Stephane Chazelas wrote:
}
} Most of the processes a user every runs are run during his login
} session.
}
} Basically, there's nothing for "a file that should set env
} variable for every process run by this given user".

The definition of a "login session" has unfortunately become very
uncertain.  The Gnome desktop via GDM on Ubuntu, for example, does
not perform "login session"-type initialization (or at least, does
not do so in a way specific to the user's shell from /etc/passwd).
The default gnome-terminal configuration also does not create login
shells when opening new windows.  Without some more-than-trivial
knowledge of Gnome configuration, there is no way for a user to
accomplish the things that you attribute to a single login session.

} - ~/.forward: depends on the MTA, I don't think the user's shell
}   is involved.

It depends on the program invoked (procmail derives $SHELL from
/etc/passwd -- users are often advised to add SHELL=/bin/sh early
in their .procmailrc unless they know exactly what they are doing).
Also, there are ways other than the .forward that filter programs,
etc. can be invoked from an MTA.

} But in all the cases above, the user can explicitely call a "sh"
} that sources a file that does the "exports".

Even granting that this is true, why solve the same problem again
every time a new situation comes up?

For example purposes, here's part of what I do in .zshenv:

----
if [[ -O $HOME ]]
then 
  # Use version-controlled configuration library if available
  [[ -d $HOME/.zsh ]] && ZDOTDIR=$HOME/.zsh
else
  # Not me, or not my home directory, don't read the startup files
  setopt NO_RCS
  return 0
fi
PATH=${ZSH_ENVPATH:-$PATH}
export ZSH_ENVPATH=$PATH
----

This is followed by some miscellaneous stuff to delete stupid settings
that misguided Linux packagers have at various times placed in the
/etc/zshenv file, and set $fpath in case $0 indicates I'm running zsh
from a non-standard location (like out of my development sandbox).  The
ZSH_ENVPATH setting assures that I can always reset $PATH to the system
default before modifying it.