On 12 Dec 2008, at 16:12, Francesco Lazzarino wrote:
>
> OSX seems to keep paths in /etc/paths and files in /etc/paths.d,  
> programs launched from Terminal seem to pick this up but Emacs.app  
> is not loaded from terminal so the path is kinda small.


Applications are not run from a login shell, so they don't inherit the  
same paths.  This is an old problem.
Your method of addressing this won't work with pre-10.5 versions of  
the OS.

The correct way is, IMHO, either leave it to the system to set the  
correct environment variables for the applications, or, as a  
convenience for users, start a login shell, print the environment and  
import it.  (I've been doing that in Aquamacs for a long time; the  
code is there if people want it.)