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

To be concise and clear about what each file is intended for

• ~/.profile is sourced every time Terminal.app is launched
• ~/.bashrc is where "traditionally" all the export statements for Bash environment are set
• /etc/paths is the main file in Mac OS that contains the list of default paths for building the PATH environment variable for all users
• /etc/paths.d/ contains files that hold additional search paths

Non-terminal programs don't inherit the system wide PATH and MANPATH variables that your terminal does! To set environment for all processes launched by a specific user, thus making environment variables available to Mac OS X GUI applications, those variables must be defined in your ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist (Apple Technical Q&A QA1067)

Use the following command line to synchronize your environment.plist with /etc/paths:

defaults write $HOME/.MacOSX/environment PATH "$(tr '\n' ':'