Re: Inferior process mystery

[Ivan Andrus <darthandrus@gmail.com>]

On Apr 25, 2012, at 8:02 PM, Andreas Schwab wrote:
> Dave Abrahams <dave@boostpro.com> writes:
> 
>> Yep, that is in fact the problem.  But how do I discover what is changing my exec-path?
> 
> exec-path is initialized from $PATH as inherited by emacs, which appears
> to be different from the one set in your shell.

Since you're on a Mac, GUI applications don't inherit from your shell.  Instead you should set environment variables in ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist, or see [1] for a number of other ways to set them and the different problems they have.

There are various ways to "fix" this automatically.  The method I use is to update environment.plist if .bashrc is newer [2].  Other methods include setting exec-path by calling a shell-script which will inherit your .bashrc setting.

This is a huge source of confusion and questions in places like StackOverflow.  I've been trying to think of a good way to bring this to people's attention without being obnoxious.  One idea is when, for example, a compilation buffer get's a command not found error, create an overlay (only on OS X (or perhaps not since it can happen in other desktop environments as well)) which explains the problem.  It wouldn't always apply of course, but it might save people some headaches.  I'm not sure if that sort of thing would be acceptable for inclusion in Emacs, but I think it would only be useful if it were on by default.

-Ivan

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/135688/setting-environment-variables-in-os-x
[2] http://use.perl.org/~brian_d_foy/journal/8915