[OS X TeX] Leopard MacTeX PATH problems, still

David Watson dewatson at mac.com
Sun Mar 23 01:27:44 CET 2008


I think the point of the new approach Apple is using in Leopard, is to  
minimize the problem of different shell flavors by implementing the  
conversion of paths to the proper syntax in a relatively transparent  
way.

The "path_helper" utility is called within your .bash_profile  
or .cshrc and does all of the hard work for you.
Example code for the .bash_profile could be something like this:

   if [ -x /usr/libexec/path_helper ]; then
          eval `/usr/libexec/path_helper -s`
   fi

"path_helper" could be called with the '-c' option instead in order to  
append paths appropriately for a csh or tsch shell.

Since the files in /etc/paths.d/ do not reference a shell and only  
contain the absolute path, they can be used for either of the main  
shell types.
If there is some particular program that needs to be run in only tcsh,  
for example, then only add that path to the .tcshrc, and avoid adding  
that path to /etc/paths.d/


On Mar 22, 2008, at 6:58 PM, Alan Litchfield wrote:
> Editing the path is relatively straightforward but one does need to  
> know what
> shell they are using and what file they intend to store their  
> parameters in,
> such as those Herb mentioned.



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