Setting global environment variables
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From: Ctalk Project on 15 Apr 2010 21:50 Warren Oates <warren.oates(a)gmail.com> writes: > In article > <545ec116-c67d-4505-8fbe-0fb29c2127c2(a)i37g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>, > "laredotornado(a)zipmail.com" <laredotornado(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> However, when I restart my system and go into my terminal, I'm not >> able to echo the values for the variables I defined ... >> >> -bash-3.2$ echo $JAVA_HOME >> >> -bash-3.2$ >> >> >> What am I doing wrong? Thanks, - Dave > > In your home directory (User/you) create a file called .bash_profile, > and put this in it: > > if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then > source ~/.bashrc > fi > > Then create a file called .bashrc and put your stuff like > >> export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home >> export CATALINA_HOME=/Library/Tomcat/Home >> export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH >> export MANPATH=/opt/local/share/man:$MANPATH > > > in .bashrc. I'd do this though: > > JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home > PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH > export JAVA_HOME PATH > > and so on. > > Note the dots which start the files. Leave the /etc/profile file alone. > > There's some old unixie reason why you do it this way. Hmmph. Bash has been around for a long time now. It is originally designed for *NIX, not OS X, so the reason for these conventions might not be immediately obvious. For example, though, on login (on a *NIX) system, the shell should start a program like a window manager only once. But when starting another non-login shell (say, for example, by opening a terminal window), the system doesn't need to start additional instances of the desktop-wide programs, but only the initialization for thqt specific terminal window. Often though, with *NIX systems, the desktop display is launched by a session manager, in which case programs and scripts can also be launched variously by ~/.xsession and ~/.xinitrc. But I'm digressing there. Recent bashes can also read /etc/profile and ~/.profile using a Bourne-shell "compatible" mode. So some RTFM'ing ("man bash" in a terminal window) for the specifics of the particular system should clarify that. HTH, Robert -- Ctalk Home Page: http://www.ctalklang.org |