Setting environment variables on OS X

Question

What is the proper way to modify environment variables like PATH in OS X?

I\'ve looked on Google a little bit and found three different files to edit:

Answer 1

Another, free, opensource, Mac OS X v10.8 (Mountain Lion) Preference pane/environment.plist solution is EnvPane.

EnvPane's source code available on GitHub. EnvPane looks like it has comparable features to RCEnvironment, however, it seems it can update its stored variables instantly, i.e. without the need for a restart or login, which is welcome.

As stated by the developer:

EnvPane is a preference pane for Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) that lets you set environment variables for all programs in both graphical and terminal sessions. Not only does it restore support for ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist in Mountain Lion, it also publishes your changes to the environment immediately, without the need to log out and back in. EnvPane includes (and automatically installs) a launchd agent that runs 1) early after login and 2) whenever the ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist changes. The agent reads ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist and exports the environment variables from that file to the current user's launchd instance via the same API that is used by launchctl setenv and launchctl unsetenv.

Disclaimer: I am in no way related to the developer or his/her project.

P.S. I like the name (sounds like 'Ends Pain').