Is it possible to set PATH on Mac OS X Lion without restarting?
Is there a way to set the PATH on /etc/paths without the need to reboot your Mac? I know I can do it using an alias but it's not permanent.
For example, I want to set the PATH for MySQL.
5 Answers
I assume you want the PATH variable to be set in your terminal environment. If you are using bash (default on Mac OS X) you can add
export PATH=${PATH}:/your/path/to/mysqlto your .bashrc file in the home directory
It is not possible to update the system-wide path.
You can execute the line specified by @Matteo though (without needing to add to .bashrc / .bash_profile) and then launch all applications from Terminal. They will inherit the modified $PATH value.
Why can't you set the path in /etc/bashrc? Seems like this would be system-wide.
0Straightforward way to edit PATH env variable for Terminal mode:
(This is just a different way to do what is mentioned above in case you don't have R/W permission, as I did not)
Navigate to the /private/etc/paths in Finder, r-click, Get Info, Select Sharing & Permissions, change Everyone to Read & Write, edit and save the file (append the new path to the end of the list), then restore the permissions if necessary.
After you set the PATH, in a Terminal window you can just type source ~/.bash_profile and hit enter. To verify that your PATH is updated, just execute echo $PATH.
