Environment variables in Mac OS X

Question

Update: The link below does not have a complete answer. Having to set the path or variable in two places (one for GUI and one for shell) is lame.

No

Answer 1

There's no need for duplication. You can set environment variables used by launchd (and child processes, i.e. anything you start from Spotlight) using launchctl setenv.

For example, if you want to mirror your current path in launchd after setting it up in .bashrc or wherever:

PATH=whatever:you:want
launchctl setenv PATH $PATH

Environment variables are not automatically updated in running applications. You will need to relaunch applications to get the updated environment variables (although you can just set variables in your shell, e.g. PATH=whatever:you:want; there's no need to relaunch the terminal).