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

On Mountain Lion all the /etc/paths and /etc/launchd.conf editing doesn't make any effect!

Apple's Developer Forums say:

"Change the Info.plist of the .app itself to contain an "LSEnvironment" dictionary with the environment variables you want.

~/.MacOSX/environment.plist is no longer supported."

So I directly edited the application's Info.plist (right click on "AppName.app" (in this case SourceTree) and then "Show package contents").

And I added a new key/dict pair called:

LSEnvironment

     PATH
     /Users/flori/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p362/bin:/Users/flori/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p362@global/bin:/Users/flori/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p326/bin:/Users/flori/.rvm/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:

(see: LaunchServicesKeys Documentation at Apple)

Now the application (in my case Sourcetree) uses the given path and works with Git 1.9.3 :-)

PS: Of course you have to adjust the Path entry to your specific path needs.