Getting Emacs to respect my default shell + options

Question

I\'m trying to get my Emacs shell to mimic that of my standard terminal sessions. Basically I would like it to respect the same PATH as well as the command prompt.

So f

Answer 1

For the path, there is the package exec-path-from-shell (OS X only).

It gets $MANPATH, $PATH and exec-path from the shell and sets them for emacs.

Answer 2

I don't use zsh but I found this in the zsh FAQ and gave it a try. I got a colorful ls with no funky characters.

3.10: Why does zsh not work in an Emacs shell mode any more?

Read more: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/zsh/#ixzz0TyTJsHMq

Another method is to put

#!/bin/sh 
TERM=emacs exec zsh

into a file ~/bin/eshell, then chmod +x ~/bin/eshell, and tell emacs to use that as the shell by adding

(setenv "ESHELL" (expand-file-name "~/bin/eshell"))

to ~/.emacs.