Set environment variables on Mac OS X Lion

Question

When someone says \"edit your .plist file\" or \"your .profile\" or \".bash_profile\" etc, this just confuses me. I have no idea where these files are, how to create them if

Answer 1

What worked for me is to create a .launchd.conf with the variables I needed:

setenv FOO barbaz

This file is read by launchd at login. You can add a variable 'on the fly' to the running launchd using:

launchctl setenv FOO barbaz`

In fact, .launchd.cond simply contains launchctl commands.

Variables set this way seem to be present in GUI applications properly.

If you happen to be trying to set your LANG or LC_ variables in this way, and you happen to be using iTerm2, make sure you disable the 'Set locale variables automatically' setting under the Terminal tab of the Profile you're using. That seems to override launchd's environment variables, and in my case was setting a broken LC_CTYPE causing issues on remote servers (which got passed the variable).

(The environment.plist still seems to work on my Lion though. You can use the RCenvironment preference pane to maintain the file instead of manually editing it or required Xcode. Still seems to work on Lion, though it's last update is from the Snow Leopard era. Makes it my personally preferred method.)